His research focuses on building adaptive capacity to address the health impact of occupational, environmental and natural hazards, particularly among vulnerable populations. Specifically, he examines the health effects of climate change including heat-related illness among farmworkers and other vulnerable populations, household- and community-level preparedness to disasters, efforts to increase adaptive capacity for climate change among local health departments. Dr. Bethel also studies best practices to implement epidemiologic methods to examine the health impact of disasters.