Welcome to Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health,

where we bring evidence, experience, and perspective to make sense of today's leading health challenges.

If you have questions or ideas for us, please send an email to Public Health Question at jh.edu.

That's Public Health Question at jh.u.edu for future podcast episodes.

Hi, I'm Lindsay Smith-Rogers, producer Public Health On Call.

Today, guest host Shelley Hearn, director of the Learner Center for

Public Health Advocacy, brings us eight miles above the Arctic Circle to talk with Bernadette Dementif,

council member for the Arctic Refuge Defense Council and member of the Gwitsia Zegwitian tribe.

They discuss the very real impacts of climate change on her community in their

day-to-day lives and our global interconnectedness, including why it matters to all of us

what's happening in a remote corner of the world. Let's listen.

Bernadette, thank you for joining me with our podcast, Public Health on Call. Can you introduce yourself?

My name is Bernard DeMintif Oji, my name is Bernadette Timentive, and I am from Fort Yukon, Alaska, which is eight miles above the Arctic Circle.

An amazing part of the world, and we're sitting in Fairbanks, Alaska right now, and what's stunning is in here in June, it should be sunny.

The skies should be beautiful, but it is filled with smoke.

And that's not what happens in Alaska. We don't have wildfire. It should be beautiful, but it is filled with smoke.

And that's not what happens in Alaska.

We don't have wildfires here.

What's happening?

It's been like this for a while, like a few years ago.

We couldn't even leave our home for three days because of the smoke inhalation.

They had elders going to the hospital to keep them in there because of the smoke inhalation, they had elders going to the hospital to keep them in there because of the smoke.

...