Health Canada / University of British Columbia

Dr. Liv Yoon is an Assistant Professor in the School of Kinesiology at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver, Canada. Prior to joining UBC, she worked in public service as a policy analyst at Health Canada’s Climate Change and Innovation Bureau (CCIB). She completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Earth Institute and Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, where she worked on projects related to climate and environmental justice, energy insecurity, just transition, extreme heat, and health. She led the NYC-chapter of the US NOAA-NIHHIS heat mapping campaign in 2021 (heatstorynyc.org). She continues to serve on the New York City Panel on Climate Change (NPCC) and Columbia’s Environmental Justice and Climate Just Cities Network (EJCJC). Her research is at the intersection of climate change, social inequities, and health, with a focus on community engagement work. Her PhD training in social sciences and socio-cultural kinesiology informs her to think about bodies in sociopolitical contexts, provoking thought about how some bodies are considered more ‘dispensable’, and in turn, rendered more vulnerable to climate-related risks and pollution.