Roxana Chicas

Roxana Chicas, PhD, RN is an Assistant Professor, in the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing and AAN Fellow at the National Academy of Medicine.

Dr. Chicas’s research focus is on occupational and environmental health disparities, investigating the physiological effects of heat exposures among farmworkers through community-engaged research. Dr. Chicas’s work is shaping the future of climate and occupational health science, two pressing fields of scientific inquiry. Her methodologies are unique and effective due to direct partnership with farmworker communities, who are now bearing the brunt of life-threatening and dehumanizing extreme heat health effects—which more communities will face as climate change worsens. Dr. Chicas’s research is creating solutions that are sustainable and grounded in the realities of labor. Dr. Chicas is leading the field-based testing of a wearable biopatch for outdoor workers to gather physiological data, such as skin temperature, respiratory rate, and heart rate, which will eventually help AI predict when a person is at risk for heat-related illnesses. As a bilingual bicultural nurse scientist, she is committed to conducting research that informs policy to advance environmental justice.