Planet Prescription: Health Sector Advocacy to Address Climate Change

In its 2015 report, the UCL-Lancet Commission on Health and Climate Change stated unequivocally that climate change poses “an unacceptably high and potentially catastrophic risk to human health.” That same year, the American Public Health Association noted “an urgent need for immediate and substantial action to mitigate climate change, together with action to adapt to the impacts to which we are already committed, in order to protect and promote human health.”

The threats to health are myriad, ranging from heat-related morbidity/mortality, to increases in vector-borne diseases, to the impact of worsening air quality on respiratory and cardiovascular disease. Nutrition is impacted by drought, floods and changing growing seasons, heat impacts worker health and productivity, and climate refugees face innumerable threats to their health and well being. Nevertheless, by in large, the health sector has played a limited role in addressing climate change, hampered by competing priorities, lack of resources or mandate, concerns about the appropriateness of engaging in advocacy, or by concerns about weighing in on a complex issue, so much of which lies outside of health professional’s areas of expertise. This reticence has begun to shift, however, with major health professional organizations, hospital systems, patient organizations, medical and public health schools, health researchers and individual health professionals in the US and around the world beginning to work on climate change, driven by a growing recognition of the critical urgency to protect human health.

As executive director of the Global Climate and Health Alliance, I work directly with many such organizations, institutions, and individuals. In this presentation, I will talk about the challenges for health professionals and health organizations entering into this arena, and the power of the health voice advocating for climate action. I will conclude by discussing the global, health sector-led campaign on air pollution, climate and health that launches next month, led by GCHA and its partners around the world.

SPEAKER: Jeni Miller, PhD
Executive Director, Global Climate and Health Alliance