Heat waves in urban centres across the Americas are expected to at least triple in the coming decades, and rising temperatures are already linked to more suicides and mental health admissions, including among the young. A five-year, $5.45-million project funded by the Wellcome Trust, Youth in Urban Centres across the Americas (YUCA), will examine exactly how heat gets under the skin of people aged 16 to 35, with Université de Montréal researchers at its core.
Jura Augustinavicius, associate professor at UdeM's School of Public Health, leads the investigation, with sleep scientist Guido Simonelli of the Faculty of Medicine as co-investigator and partners at McGill, Drexel University, UNAM in Mexico and Pontificia Universidad Católica Argentina. The team will follow cohorts of young people with at least mild symptoms of depression, anxiety or psychosis in Montreal, Querétaro and Buenos Aires, tracking them through the warmer months of the year.
Beyond temperature exposure and mental health outcomes, the study will measure candidate mechanisms spanning air pollution, social isolation, sleep, cognition, physical activity, cardiovascular function, medication use and brain imaging. Where most previous research examined only severe endpoints such as hospital visits, YUCA aims to capture the broader toll and to co-design protective interventions with young people themselves, built into existing mental health services, while generating new datasets for researchers across the Americas.