Resham Patel is an assistant teaching professor in the University of Washington School of Public Health, with 15 years of local and national public health practice experience. She serves as the director of practitioner engagement for the UW Center for Disaster Resilient Communities. Patel leads several efforts to advance disaster research, climate resilience, and workforce development, presenting nationally and developing adaptable resources for practitioners across the country. She is co-leading the Collaborative on Extreme Heat Events project focused on transdisciplinary climate health partnerships across Seattle, Portland and Vancouver BC.
At Public Health–Seattle and King County, Patel collaborated with local and regional partners as she led preparedness training, evaluation and improvement efforts, including the agency’s COVID-19 response assessment. Her incident management experience includes key roles in King County’s COVID-19 response and deployment for Hawaii’s 2018 volcano and hurricane disasters. Patel has served on several national workgroups including through the National Association of County and City Health Officials, where she previously worked as a preparedness senior analyst. She is a doctoral candidate at Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, focused on implementation science and crisis decision-making. She has a Master of Public Health from Columbia University and is an alumna of the Center for Health Security’s Emerging Leaders in Biosecurity Fellowship.