Cristina Arnes Sanz

Cristina Arnés Sanz comes from Spain. She is currently pursuing a Master of Public Health with a concentration in Climate Change and Health at the Yale School of Public Health, in the Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases department. She earned her degree in Pharmacy from the Complutense University of Madrid in 2022.

Her research focuses on the intersection of climate change and health. Prior to her studies at Yale, Cristina worked as a research assistant in the Climate-Sensitive Infectious Diseases lab at Heidelberg University in Germany. During her time there, she contributed to the development of an innovative framework for co-producing policy-relevant indicators and decision-support tools aimed at enhancing climate resilience against emerging infectious diseases in Europe and beyond. This work was published in the Lancet Regional Health - Europe in September 2023 as part of the Horizon Europe project IDAlert.

Currently, she is an Urban Health and Climate Change Fellow at the Yale Center on Climate Change and Health, collaborating with the Resilient Cities Network under the supervision of Professor Jeannette Ickovics. She is writing her MPH thesis related to global health law, policy, and governance, with guidance from Dr. Colin Carlson and affiliated as a research fellow with the Yale Law School’s Solomon Center for Health Law and Policy.

In addition to her academic pursuits, Cristina is actively engaged in European policy-making processes as a member of the Youth4Health Network of the WHO Office for Europe. In 2024, she served as the Focal Point for Europe for the UN Major Group of Children and Youth (MGCY), coordinating European youth engagement in various UN processes.