On December 30, 2021, unrelenting gale-force winds and bone-dry terrain sparked the most devastating wildfire in Colorado history. The Marshall Fire raged through more than 6,000 acres, destroyed more than 1,000 homes and businesses, and forced some 50,000 people to evacuate through thick smoke and fiery flying embers.
The Marshall Fire and other climate-related disasters provide grist for discussion about why they have occurred, what might be done to prevent them or mitigate their damage, and how to prepare for and protect public health in future emergencies. That’s the focus of the Certificate in Climate and Disaster Resilience program at Colorado School of Public Health.
The Marshall Fire played an important role in crafting the certificate program and sharpening its focus on climate-related disasters, said program instructor Samantha Noll, MD. Noll is assistant professor in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health (EOH) with ColoradoSPH and the Department of Emergency Medicine with the University of Colorado Anschutz School of Medicine.
The Marshall Fire “happened in our backyard,” Noll said. “Getting a better understanding of the public health role in that kind of incident has helped us to continue to develop the course for the needs of our students,” Noll said.
“I think we could argue right now that every emergency and disaster is related not only to public health but also relates back to the climate on some level,” said David Silversmith, an instructor in the 15-credit certificate program.
“Public health is the key component of every disaster response, whether it is a public health disaster or not,” he added. As emergency management professionals, “we are here to keep people healthy and to bring a community back to where it was before the incident happened.”
Lexi Potter, MPH ’25 from ColoradoSPH at Colorado State University, is one of nearly 50 students who have earned the Certificate in Climate and Disaster Resilience. She is now putting those skills to work as emergency management assistant in the City of Renton Emergency Management Division near Seattle.
Potter can attest to the close link between climate-driven disasters and public health. In December 2025 Renton and other western Washington communities endured serious flooding after heavy rainfall. Some 100,000 people across the region received evacuation orders, and thousands of homes were damaged, along with roads and bridges.
The disaster posed serious public health threats, Potter said.
“There is potential contamination of water sources,” she said. “Floodwater ends up in people’s yards, and it can get contaminated with whatever they have in their garage, such as chemicals.”
In addition, trees, branches and other debris dislodged by floodwaters piled up and threatened to destabilize bridges. That means expensive repairs, of course, but also risks to public safety, Potter said.
“If people are going to be using those bridges, you have to make sure they are still in good condition so that people can get back on them,” Potter said.
She added that Renton is home to Bloodworks Northwest, a large blood processing and donation center.
“If they get flooded, that’s a huge problem,” she said. “We have to make sure that all organizations doing critical medical work have the supplies and information and resources they need.”
The certificate program concentrates on giving Potter and other students the tools to think through and respond to the wide array of disasters that have befallen communities in the United States and abroad.
Silversmith noted that students frequently do a “deep dive” on a major emergency incident that often occurs during a semester. They analyze the emergency response, including the roles of those involved, messaging to the public, what went well and what could have been done better.
“If you were the incident commander, what would have been your priorities that we needed to focus on to understand what is going on and to mitigate the situation?” Silversmith said.
He emphasized prodding students to sharpen their critical thinking skills is essential to the certificate work.
“We want our students to problem solve and to identify the problem we are trying to solve,” he said. “As long as you can justify your decision making and why you are choosing this as a priority, your answer is never wrong. As long as we can talk out the process, we have done our job as instructors.”
From its start, the program focused on encouraging students to apply “apply a public health lens” in real-life situations, said its director, Megan Cherewick, PhD, MPH, assistant professor in the EOH and global concentration director in the Department of Community and Behavioral Health.
The program’s founder and EOH professor, John Adgate, PhD, MSPH, recognized “the simple reality that disasters are no longer rare events. They are a defining public health challenge,” Cherewick said.
“We saw a training gap for people who wanted to protect their communities from wildfires, floods, disease outbreaks, mass violence, displacement, and climate changes,” she said.
The emphasis of the certificate work is on practice, rather than theory, “which is why we have tried to build in as much experiential learning as possible in simulations so students can experience what it’s like to face a real disaster.”
The challenges include uncertain information, rapidly changing and spreading risks, and challenges in coordinating responding agencies, Cherewick said. A public health perspective is crucial for also determining how best to protect communities and minimize inequities in distributing aid, she noted.
“We think about what populations might be hard to reach during an emergency and which populations might be more vulnerable or need different resources or support,” Cherewick said. “For example, during a wildfire, folks may not have the same access to emergency orders to leave.” The idea then is to consider how to build “public health safety nets” to ensure all people have equal protection during a disaster, she said.
The three instructors bring a wealth of experience to their classroom teaching. Silversmith had years of experience in hazard response in New York City and spent seven years with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) before assuming his current position as deputy director of the Transportation Operations Center with the Department of Transportation.
Noll completed a fellowship in disaster and operational medicine at George Washington University and worked in the field in Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia, providing health care and public health services in emergencies and disasters. She has also focused on healthcare resilience while in Colorado.
Cherewick trained in the John Hopkins Center for Humanitarian Health and brings a particular focus to the certificate program on global health and probes what the United States can learn from communities around the world in how they respond to disasters.
In the Democratic Republic of Congo, for example, Cherewick saw communities without Wi-Fi warn of impending volcano eruptions by putting up flags that changed colors. That helped people to evacuate more quickly, she said.
“I’m inspired by seeing the resilience of communities and how they respond after disasters with far less resources than we have here,” Cherewick said.
Potter shares Cherewick’s broad perspective. She said the certificate work, which includes the required course “Global Response to Disasters and Climate Crises,” dovetailed well with her MPH concentration in global health and health disparities.
“I enjoyed doing the certification because it focused on climate change and how that connects to worsening vulnerabilities for some populations over others,” she said.
In addition, Potter said the certificate course “Climate and Disaster Mental Health” spurred her interest in the importance of “psychological first aid,” a tool for responding to the inevitable stress that disasters place on first responders and community members.
The idea is that training ordinary people to support others dealing with acute stress can help to meet the community’s psychosocial needs while preserving specialist resources for those suffering more complex mental health challenges, she said.
“I feel that it’s a valuable framework for addressing the psychological supports that people need after disasters,” Potter said.
The courses also gave her a solid foundation to enter the world of emergency management, she said.
“One of the biggest pieces I got out of the program was building my vocabulary and understanding of emergency management,” she said. “The incident command system and national incident management system are things you are expected to know coming in, and that’s something we emphasized and learned a lot about in the introductory class.”
Silversmith said has the same “take-away” for students like Potter who complete the certificate program and for those who might take only the introductory course or another as a one-off.
“Everyone is going to be involved in a disaster at some point in whatever career they go into,” he said. “As an emergency manager, the most important tools I can have are people that have enough baseline knowledge to do their job and assist when we are initially overwhelmed.”
People in public health must be prepared for these situations, Silversmith concluded.
“If you work in a small local public health department, you will be tasked with a position to respond to whatever the emergency is, in whatever area you support,” he said.