Browsing by Autor "Sandra Aguilar-Gómez"

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Environmental justice beyond race: Skin tone and exposure to air pollution
(National Academy of Sciences, 2025) Sandra Aguilar-Gómez; Juan-Camilo Cárdenas; Ricardo Salas Díaz
Recent research, focused mostly on the United States and Western Europe, shows that marginalized communities often face greater environmental degradation. However, the ethnoracial categories used in these studies may not fully capture environmental inequality in the Global South. Moving beyond conventional ethnoracial variables, this study presents findings exploring the link between skin tone and fine particulate matter (PM2.5) exposure in Colombia. By matching household geolocations from a large-scale longitudinal survey with satellite-based PM2.5 estimates, we find that skin tone predicts both initial pollution exposure levels and their changes over time. Although average exposure levels remained stable during our study period, the environmental justice (EJ) landscape in Colombia contemporaneously underwent a complete transformation. In 2010, lighter-skinned individuals faced higher PM2.5 exposure, but darker-skinned individuals experienced steeper increases in the following years. By 2016, the EJ gap had reversed, with people with the darkest skin tones exposed to PM2.5 levels nearly one SD higher than those faced by people with the lightest skin tones. These patterns remain robust when controlling for a comprehensive set of theoretically relevant covariates, including ethnoracial self-identification and income. Disproportionate exposure to pollution from fires partially explains the observed disparities. Decomposition analysis shows that this variable, local collective action, and economic marginalization account for a sizeable share of the EJ gap. However, one-third of the gap remains unexplained by observable characteristics. With climate change intensifying fire incidence, the disproportionate disease burdens that vulnerable groups face might deepen unless policy measures are taken to reverse this trend.
Gender Gaps in Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practices Related to Environmental Degradation in Colombia
(RELX Group (Netherlands), 2024) Sandra Aguilar-Gómez; David González; Camila Galindo; Juan-Camilo Cárdenas; J Arenas
Killer Congestion: Temperature, Healthcare Utilization and Patient Outcomes
(2025) Sandra Aguilar-Gómez; Joshua Graff Zivin; Matthew Neidell
Extreme heat imperils health and results in more emergency department (ED) visits and hospitalizations.Since temperature affects many individuals within a region simultaneously, these health impacts could lead to surges in healthcare demand that generate hospital congestion.Climate change will only exacerbate these challenges.In this paper, we provide the first estimates of the health impacts from extreme heat that unpacks the direct effects from the indirect ones that arise due to hospital congestion.Using data from Mexico's largest healthcare subsystem, we find that ED visits rise by 7.5% and hospitalizations by 4% given daily maximum temperatures above 34 C.As a result, more (and sicker) ED patients are discharged home, and deaths within the hospital increase.While some of those hospital deaths can be directly attributed to extreme heat, our analysis suggests that approximately over half of these excess deaths can be viewed as spillover impacts due to hospital congestion.Additional analyses also reveal an increase in the share of deaths occurring outside hospitals, consistent with congestion-related health harms arising from the discharge of sicker patients from the ED.Our findings highlight an important new avenue of adaptation to climate change.If hospital congestion contributes to excess health damages from a changing climate, then expanding labor and capital investments and improving surge management tools can help reduce those damages.