Archive for health – Page 2

DOHA Declaration on Climate, Health and Wellbeing

by CAHA
December 3rd, 2012

The international health and medical community have developed a joint statement on climate health and wellbeing calling for health to be central to climate action during the COP18 international climate change negotiations in Doha, Qatar.

Signatories to the Doha Declaration for Climate, Health and Wellbeing include the World Medical Association, the International Council of Nurses, International Federation of Medical Students, Health Care Without Harm, European Public Health Association, Royal College of General Practitioners (UK), Climate and Health Council, OraTaiao: The New Zealand Climate & Health Council, NHS Sustainable Development Unit, Umeå Center for Global Health Research, Climate and Health Alliance, Public Health Association of Australia, the Australian Healthcare and Hospitals Association, Doctors Reform Society, Australian Association of Social Workers, and the Australian Medical Students Association and many others.

The Doha Declaration calls for health to be central to climate action, and highlights the opportunities to improve health through emissions reductions – pointing out that reducing fossil fuel consumption and moving to low carbon energy systems can deliver many benefits to health worldwide.

“The impact of climate change on health is one of the most significant measures of harm associated with our warming planet,” the Declaration says. “Protecting health is therefore one of the most important motivations for climate action.”

This effort builds on the collaboration at the 2011 global climate and health summit among the health and medical community in advocate for climate action.

The Doha Declaration outlines why health experts are extremely worried about the slow progress at the international climate negotiations, and highlights how the health co-benefits of emissions can build support for ambitious climate action.

This joint statement from the global health community reiterates policy demands from the 2011 Durban Declaration and Global Call to Action urging countries to consider the health implications of climate change as well as the health benefits of climate action – which can provide savings that either largely or completely offset the costs of mitigation and adaptation.

This statement will be used in discussion with policy makers in Doha, but also serves as roadmap of future action.

See the CAHA media release here.

If you want to support this statement, sign up here: www.dohadeclaration.weebly.com

Categories Advocacy, Allied health, Children, Climate, Emissions, Health, Health professionals, Medical, survival, Sustainability, Transformation
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Future under threat: climate change and children’s health

by CAHA
October 13th, 2012

By Brad Farrant, University of Western Australia, Fiona Armstrong, Climate and Health Alliance, and Glenn Albrecht, Murdoch University

Climate change has been widely recognised by leading public health organisations and prestigious peer reviewed journals as the the biggest global health threat of the 21st century.

A recently released report, commissioned by 20 of the most vulnerable countries, highlights the size of the threat: climate change is already responsible for 400,000 deaths annually, mostly from hunger and communicable disease. And our carbon-intensive energy system causes another 4.5 million deaths annually, largely due to air pollution.

Along with the old and disadvantaged, children are particularly vulnerable to the negative effects of climate change. Children suffer around 90% of the disease burden from climate change.

What can our children expect if we continue the way we’re going?

Even if current international carbon reduction commitments are honoured, the global temperature rise is predicted to be more than double the internationally agreed target of 2°C. Humanity continues to pour record amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. It has been argued that, if this continues, reasonable hope of avoiding dangerous climate change will have passed us by in a mere 16 years.

The impact climate change has on children born today may well be decided before they can vote on it.

Climate change will affect global agricultural productivity and food security, with 25 million additional children predicted to be malnourished by 2050. The estimate of an additional 200 million “environmental refugees” by 2050 has become the widely accepted figure. This means, if we do not intervene, millions of children will suffer the adverse mental, physical and social health impacts associated with forced migration.

The impact climate change has on children born today may well be decided before they can vote on it. Steve Slater Wildlife Encounters

The intensity and frequency of weather extremes will increase. This will result in increased child illness and death from heat waves, floods, storms, fires and droughts. The increased incidence and severity of floods, for instance, will increase child illness and death from diarrhoea and other water born diseases.

We’re likely to see more asthma, allergies, disease and other adverse health outcomes that disproportionately affect children. A recent report observed that climate change may make serious epidemics more likely in previously less-affected communities. This report also found that changing climate conditions have the potential to stimulate the emergence of new diseases and influence children’s vulnerability to disease.

Australians will not be immune to these changes.

It has been estimated that climate change will mean that Australian children will face a 30% to 100% increase across selected health risks by 2050. Indeed, if we fail to act, future generations of Australians may face a three- to 15-fold increase in these health risks by 2100.

Because their brains are still developing, children are particularly vulnerable to toxic levels of stress. Increased exposure to trauma and stress because of climate change is likely to affect children’s brain development and mental health. Children surveyed six months after the 2003 bushfires in Canberra, for example, showed much higher rates of emotional problems. Nearly half had elevated symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Research has also found that prolonged exposure to adverse weather conditions is associated with increased child and adolescent psychological distress over time. As global warming drives local and regional change to home environments, children, like many non-human animals will experience place-based distress (known as solastalgia) at the unwelcome changes.

An additional 25 million children around the world are predicted to be malnourished by 2050. United Nations Photo

We are only beginning to understand the impacts that climate change will have on children’s physical and mental health. More research at the regional and local levels is desperately needed so we can adequately understand, prepare for and adapt to the impacts of climate change.

James Hansen from NASA recently argued that:

Children cannot avoid hearing that the window of opportunity to act in time to avoid dramatic climate impacts is closing, and that their future and that of other species is at stake. While the psychological health of our children needs to be protected, denial of the truth exposes them to even greater risk.

We must listen to the fears and concerns of children and young people and include their voices in discussions about climate change.

The existence of cost effective ways to reduce climate change means there is no excuse for inaction. Climate change and the carbon-intensive energy system are currently costing 1.7% of global GDP and are expected to reach 3.5% by 2030. This is much higher than the cost of shifting to a low carbon economy.

Right now the science is telling us that we are not doing enough.

As children are innocent and non-consenting victims of climate change, adults have an ethical obligation to do everything possible to prevent further damage to their ability to thrive in the future. To do otherwise is to ignore the very thing many of us see as the most important reason for living.

Brad Farrant is supported by funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council. He has no commercial interests of any kind.

Fiona Armstrong is Convenor of the Climate and Health Alliance.

Glenn Albrecht has previously received funding from an ARC DP project and an NCCARF grant.

This article was originally published at The Conversation.
Read the original article.

Categories Advocacy, Children, Climate, Health, Social policy, survival, Uncategorized
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A “dismal” response to “big, unprecedented, threats” to human survival: McMichael on McKeon

by CAHA
October 8th, 2012

This post was first published on Croakey as http://blogs.crikey.com.au/croakey/2012/10/06/more-mckeon-malarkey/ on 7th October 2012.

In an email to CAHA he agreed to make public, Professor Tony McMichael provides another critique of the McKeon review’s narrow approach to health and medical research.

This McKeon Review ‘consultation paper’ contains, for the wider social enterprise of public health research, a dismal but predictable set of recommendations.  The name  ’NHMRC’ incorporates the words ‘Health and Medical’, but the McKeon Review panel membership comprised ‘medical’ rather than ‘health’ persons — eminent researchers in laboratory and clinical science — along with a strong representation of the private for-profit business (including biotech) sector.

Of course, it’s easy to rail against this McKeon Review output and the restricted, orthodox, and somewhat closed-shop NHMRC mentality. However, the document also provides a sobering reminder of the fundamental problem that societies face today in their need to expand their concern, research effort, resources and policy to abating the big, and unprecedented, systemic threats to population health and survival from human-caused climate change and other extraordinary global environmental changes. These threats to health are of a kind not previously faced, and a broad and distinctive genre of research in relation to them is required.

The committee members are very able people who, variously, have great intellectual, reputational and financial investments in the status quo; they are at the top of their professional pyramids; and they probably cannot imagine a different world in the near future with a radically different spectrum of health-risk issues.

History has seen it all before. As prolonged droughts closed in on the Maya civilisation in the ninth century, contributing greatly to the weakening of the agricultural base (already stretched by a population that had expanded substantially), the rulers and opinion-leaders opted for ever larger edifices and grander ceremonies. They had, presumably, little understanding or interest in the increasingly precarious longer-term prospects of their society. Hay was to be made while the sun shined. It was business as usual, but always with a growing appetite for ever-more resources.

Dubai today is following suit, in a region of the world where they have had to give up trying to grow their own grains, now that their once-only aquifer supplies have been depleted. Meanwhile, the sheikhs and financiers opt for world-tallest buildings and creating (and selling) artificial island ‘nations’ in the Gulf that have been built to a mere couple of metres above the (rising) sea level.

The McKeon Review perspective is of a kind with these assumptions of business-as-usual (in a stable world).  It is not surprising that the Chief Executive of Medicines Australia, Brendan Shaw, has been quoted as saying this week: “We are encouraged by the McKeon Review’s recognition of the importance of clinical research both as generator of economic benefit, but more importantly as a generator of health benefits for Australian patients, and the recognition of the important role the medicines industry plays in this.

Categories Climate, Health, Research, survival, Sustainability
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Do you have the Power to Persuade? A workshop on building knowledge and capacity for policy change

by CAHA
September 13th, 2012

By Fiona Armstrong                                                                                                                                               

How to translate research evidence into policy? What research methodologies offer the best results for social policy outcomes? How can researchers, policymakers and the third sector work together to deliver better results for people and communities? How do we create policy networks that can be adaptive, resilient and flexible enough to respond to the significant societal challenges we face?

The Power to Persuade forum hosted by University of Melbourne and Good Shepherd on Wednesday 5th September 2012 brought together researchers, service providers, policymakers and policy advocates to discuss some of these questions to build a better collective understanding of the necessary elements of effective social policy outcomes.

Transforming governance

Keynote speaker Mark Considine acknowledged the need for transformational change in public policy development, and proposed the establishment of civil society governance networks, built on “deep partnerships” between institutions and other actors, and guided by judicial bureaucratic mandates, may provide a model for the kind of societal leadership that can fill the gaps currently created by the ‘short termism’ endemic in current political governance.

Considine pointed to complex policy challenges such as climate change, food insecurity and people movement, suggesting that the capacity for transformational change needed to address these issues may not reside in existing institutions, and if we are to avoid disruption and upheaval triggered by environmental shock, new governance networks are needed.

Building the sorts of partnerships required for adaptive resilient policy responses can begin through, for example, data sharing, pooled budgets and shared research, to build trust and common goals – and these smaller steps can lead to deeper ties over time that can better manage and respond to transformational change.

Economics and policy decision-making

Economist Alan Sheill spoke about the harsh realities of having to determine priorities in health and how economics can provide important insights about cost: benefit ratios to inform decision-making.

While for health and welfare professionals, service providers and policymakers this is a challenging dimension of social policy, Shiell says: “we do not have enough resources (time, finances, space etc) to do everything we would wish to do to promote health and social well-being – therefore we need to choose”.

However, economic evidence is not always necessary, not does it always inform policy decision-making, Friell said, pointing out that very often, the public and politicians are not aware of the economic cost of political decisions.

It was important for social policy advocates to use the rhetoric of economic costs to build support for actions, but recognize that economic analysis does not always reflect broader social benefits and there is a need to develop research methods that can incorporate less easily quantifiable health and social wellbeing gains from social policy initiatives.

Methodologies and case studies 

Other speakers outlined case studies and research methodologies that offer powerful and effective examples of social policy innovation, such as J2SI, a long term program for homelessness. Damon Alexander shared some insights into the benefits of Social Network Analysis, a research method that is being used in multiple ways eg to map strategic information networks to evaluate innovation in government, look at information flows of strategic advice within primary care partnerships, and understand formal and informal relationships within organisations.

Social network analysis was a powerful tool for understanding relationships between actors in a particular policy environment, and mapping “what” happens and “when” but not so much about “how” or “why”…

Other case studies included great examples of participatory rights based methodologies from Karen Dowling from the Victorian Department of Education on ‘Listen 2 Learners’; and Leo Fieldgrass from the Brotherhood of St Lawrence on ‘Mobile Matters’.

Final word

John Falzon from St Vincent de Paul responded to this session, and spoke about the exceptionally important job of engaging with community and with people in developing social policy, finished with a poetic warning from Martin Luther King in saying: “A riot is at best the language of the unheard.”

Like all good modern events, the Twitter stream provided insight into people’s thinking. You can search for some of the twitter stream on the forum by using the hash tag: #powertopersuade – a small sample is reproduced here:

Dean Lombard?@vcossDean

Evidence is important, but clearly not enough. Plenty evidence of the social harm of problem gambling; but still no change #powertopersuade

Philip Wallis?@philipwallis

Hearing from @KazzaD1 about using social media for student participation in policy development #powertopersuade

 

John Falzon?@JohnFalzon

The question has been posed: who should we be trying to persuade? #powertopersuade #powertothepeople

nyunkia tauss?@nyunkiatauss

In effective system, all doors shd be the right door, whether it’s for people in dire need or not. Great concept @vcossdean #powertopersuade

Karen Dowling?@KazzaD1

Kathy Landvogt, Good Shepherd at #PowertoPersuade used SNA to look at effectivenss of financial services 4 ppl needing help.’No wrong door’

GSY&FS Advocacy?@GoodAdvocacy

How do you know you are making a difference? Using health economics to measure outcomes #powertopersuade

Marie McInerney?@mariemcinerney

Great insights into challenges and promise of Sacred Heart Mission’s J2SI chronic homelessness research proj #powertopersuade – stay tuned.

CAHA Inc?@healthy_climate

Economist Alan Shiell: valuable health interventions via unexpected approaches eg reduce HIV through micro financing #powertopersuade

Categories Advocacy, General, Governance, Health, Health policy, Health professionals, Public policy, Social policy, Transformation
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Crowdsourcing a new e-publication on climate and health

by CAHA
September 3rd, 2012

CAHA’s suggestion for a publication focused on the ‘health implications of climate change’ was chosen from a pool of ideas for a workshop at the Melbourne Writers Festical last month.

The idea was conceived by Melissa Sweet from the health blog Croakey who invited readers to submit ideas for new, health related online publications so that one could be selected for development at the New News Conference as part of the Melbourne Writers’ Festival.

Around thirty eager participants showed up for a high speed product development workshop dubbed “crowdsourcing a new publication”.

Workshop participants were asked to come up with strategies for community building, editorial, digital news and business development as well as next steps.

After just one hour, we had a core idea: a publication/website that would to showcase the benefits of healthy sustainable societies through user generated content which was underpinned by scientific research and literature.

A key message was that it should be about ‘showing’ not ‘telling’, and the content ‘brains trust’ advocated the creation of an appealing visual narrative – to help show what low carbon living IS, feels like, looks like, and in doing so, illustrate what the benefits are – creating a pull rather than push factor.

Read about some of the ideas generated and observer’s thoughts on this fast moving workshop on Croakey and in a Melbourne Press Club report.

CAHA’s take on the outcome appears below in a brief overview of what a proposal for publication might look like:

******

Purpose/Aim of the publication

To communicate climate change and global environmental issues in a public health frame that leads to changes in policy/influences policy

Strategy

To aggregate and connect community efforts to respond to climate change in a visible way through social media and digital platforms using stories, pictures, personal narratives and profiles

Audience

Various groups – community, policymakers, media

Groups with various levels of engagement with the issue – the unsure, the confused, the early adopters

Partners/Collaborators

Others who are driving changes in community whether it is local initiatives such as a suburban food forest or transformation change through to national initiatives such as thought leadership and research on low carbon pathways

Methods of Engagement

Launch through social media and social networks

Link to environmental and health groups

Use various mediums to connect with various groups ie include blogs, research papers

Need to approach from the point of view of “showing” not “telling”

Opportunities and challenges  

The Big One: Capturing, modelling and communicating what healthy sustainable societies look like, feel like, are like!

While there may be a range of different audiences requiring different strategies of engagement and messages/stories it may be possible to influence other groups ( ie policymakers through demonstration of community engagement)

Building a community of interest around a personal connection to environmental change using a public health frame

Provides an ability to interweave the evidence with community experience

Using data journalism to demonstrate the cumulative impacts of individual action and sectoral change ie demonstrate the real life implications of policy ie Bill’s compost achieves the following results for him, but what the implications of rolling out his approach to every household?

Ie what are the economics involved in scaling up? What might the savings be – in emissions, and in financial terms?

Challenges – How to connect with different audiences eg experts, policymakers, community, media?

*********

Do you think you’d like to see this idea developed further?

If you would like to be involved in taking this project forward, contact [email protected]

Categories Advocacy, Health, Health policy, Sustainability, Uncategorized, Wellness
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Health ministers’ attacks on climate change action are just sick

by CAHA
August 12th, 2012

This article was published on The Conversation on 10 August 2012 via the following link: http://theconversation.edu.au/health-ministers-attacks-on-climate-change-action-are-just-sick-8671

By Stephan Lewandowsky and Fiona Armstrong

The ACCC has been vigilant about following up the 45 or so carbon price gouging complaints it gets each day. But who can stop the politicians? Their relentless carbon price scare campaigns seek to frighten, rather than inform, an increasingly polarised public who should be getting the facts on health and climate change.

Take, for example, the Liberal Health Minister in Victoria, David Davis. His recent contribution to the climate discussion was a leaflet for distribution across Melbourne’s eastern suburbs which suggested that the “carbon tax will hurt patients”. He said that hospitals will face a $13 million “tax bill” because “Julia Gillard doesn’t care.”

In actual fact, there is no such tax bill. Even if electricity costs rose by $13 million, it would reflect less than 0.1% of total health expenditure. Given that the Commonwealth will be footing the bill for 50% of the cost of hospital care from 2014, the states can hardly claim the burden as their own.

The most effective method of protecting the health sector against future price rises would be to invest in energy efficiency and distributed energy generation systems. This would help manage future price increases as well as reduce harmful air pollution from burning fossil fuels for electricity. Air pollution puts many people in hospitals with respiratory disease and cancer. Because of this, the previous Victorian government set aside $460 million to make public buildings, such as hospitals, more energy efficient and therefore healthier.

Carbon pricing is in fact a health protection measure. The World Health Organisation, the World Medical Association, the CSIRO, the United Nations Human Development Program, and the Australian Medical Association all call, and have been calling for years, for a policy to discourage and reduce greenhouse gas emissions because of the harm they pose to human health.

Motor vehicle pollution is a killer: moves to reduce it should be welcomed. According to the Bureau of Transport and Regional Economics, between 900 and 2,000 early deaths occur annually in Australia from motor-vehicle related air pollution alone. Coal-fired power generation carries a similar toll – creating a health burden that, if reflected in the costs of electricity would effectively double the cost of coal-fired power.

Mr Davis is Health Minister of a wealthy state in a developed nation. He cannot possibly claim to be unaware of the substantial body of evidence, present in thousands of peer reviewed scientific journals over several decades, that climate change poses far bigger risks to health than a small rise in energy prices – especially when it is offset by generous subsidies to prevent those on low incomes from energy poverty. Indeed, the EU expects that a substantial proportion of the costs of emission reductions will be offset by co-benefits arising from improved health. And the cumulative health benefits are doubled if action is taken immediately, rather than delaying till 2015.

The basis for Mr Davis’s claims is a report commissioned by the Victorian Government. It was prepared by commercial consultant Sinclair Knight Merz and released to the Herald Sun, but otherwise not available publicly. According to the Herald Sun, it estimates an increase of $13 million in health care costs as a direct result of the carbon price.

Mr Davis is not alone in making such claims; similar statements have been released by the NSW and Queensland governments. The Federal Shadow Health Minister Peter Dutton has attacked the (Labor) Tasmanian Premier for refusing to frighten her electorate with similar claims.

These politicians have the job of preserving and safe-guarding public health. Instead of heeding the recommendations of every major medical body, those politicians see fit to attack a measure that is in their constituents’ best interests. In addition to the direct harm to health from fossil fuels, climate change already claims 300,000 human lives annually.

If not from science, where are Mr Davis and others getting their advice? Could it be from the Sunshine coast doctor responsible for the recent LNP motion to ban climate science from schools in Queensland, who thought he could disprove 150 years of physics in his back yard with two eskies and glad wrap?

While the current legislation is hardly a sufficient effort to reduce emissions to the extent required, it is in line with widely accepted policy settings around the world and it is a first step in the right direction.

What are the likely consequences of Mr Davis’s claims and other egregious misrepresentations of the price on carbon?

There is good reason to fear that those claims may be quite successful: we know that once a myth has been put into the public arena, it often resists any corrective effort, no matter how readily it can be debunked. Claims that arouse fear can be politically very effective, especially when combined with a seductively simple antidote – getting rid of the carbon tax.

The Australian media are notoriously incapable of differentiating fact from fiction, especially when it comes to the price on carbon. Indeed, we are not aware of any challenge to Mr. Davis’s claims, and those of his colleagues, in the corporate media.

George Orwell’s “Ministry of Truth” has been enshrined into Western culture as a symbol for the chilling inversion of reality that results when facts become irrelevant and propaganda paramount.

Victorians should be concerned that their “Ministry of Health” may likewise become known for opposing, rather than facilitating, public health measures that are aimed at managing the consequences of climate change.

Authors

Stephan Lewandowsky

Australian Professorial Fellow, Cognitive Science Laboratories at University of Western Australia

 

 

Fiona Armstrong

Convenor, Climate and Health Alliance

Categories Advocacy, Climate, Energy, Health, Health policy, Uncategorized
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A conversation with the Climate Commission

by designscope
July 23rd, 2012

Climate and Health Alliance members and other health professionals and health service executives met with the Australian Government Climate Commission on Wednesday 25th July 2012 at Sunshine Hospital to discuss health and climate change.

The meeting was hosted by Western Health CEO Kathryn Cook at the new Sunshine Hospital and made possible by Friends of CAHA and Doctors for the Environment member Dr Forbes McGain and his colleague at Western Health, sustainability officer Catherine O’Shea.

Commissioners Tim Flannery, Lesley Hughes, Roger Beale and Gerry Hueston and Commission media advisor Amanda McKenzie attended the meeting with around 25 people including health professionals from medicine, nursing, allied health, psychology and public health disciplines, as well as health care services and policy people.

Some of the topics of discussion included: What does health sector know about climate change? What can be done to build a greater awareness among health professionals about the risks to health from climate change? What are the opportunities for the health sector to demonstrate leadership in responding to, and being seen to respond to, climate change?

A lack of awareness among health professionals about the implications of climate change for health was raised as a barrier to the sector effectively responding. The education of all health professionals on climate and health was considered vital and urgent – including from  undergraduate level to continuing professional development for the existing workforce.

Professor Lesley Hughes presented the findings from the Commission’s report on climate change and health and its latest report on climate impacts and opportunities for Victoria. Professor Tim Flannery explained why they were keen to engage with health professionals: to raise awareness about the implications for health from climate change but also to encourage health professionals to use their own status as respected members of the community to help build community understanding about the need to respond urgently to climate change.

Professor Flannery’s comments to media before the meeting summed this up: “Climate change is one of the serious threats to Victoria’s health, especially those in our community who are most vulnerable, like the elderly and the very young. Few Australians are aware of the risks to their health and the health of their family and community. While much of the public discussions on climate change have emphasised the environmental impacts, a greater focus needs to be on the health consequences. Climate change must be considered a public health priority.”

The meeting was then opened to discussion, with participants encouraged to ask the Commission questions about their report http://climatecommission.gov.au/report/the-critical-decade-climate-change-and-health/ and to discuss what needed to be done to raise awareness among the health community about climate change.

Some of the challenges that were raised included:

  • the quarantining of public health sector budgets separating capital from operational expenditure made it difficult to make the case for the implementation of energy efficiency measures as the impact of costs were felt in one budgetary area and the savings realized in another.
  • Other socio-cultural challenges include the complex psychological responses to climate change and the difficulties in finding effective ways to communicate such a complex science in ways that are not disempowering and alarming. Serious concerns were raised about the neglect of mental health risks and the lack of preparedness to respond to severe risks to mental health.
  • The need to engage young people in particular was noted and the importance of including their voices and their concerns in relation to how we respond to climate change.
  • A lack of climate ‘literacy’ among health professionals was considered a barrier to health professionals understanding the implications of, and the need to respond to, climate change. Education about climate change and health is needed in undergraduate and postgraduate curricula for all health professionals, as well as in continuing professional development for current practitioners, the meeting heard.
  • There is also a need for the health sector to gain an understanding of the gendered nature of the health implications of climate change and climate policy, especially in relation to the differential effect of climate change on women.
  • Other concerns were raised about the mistruths being promoted in the community by the Victorian Health Minister David Davis in a recent brochure claiming the carbon tax would hurt health by driving up energy costs.
  • While there is some degree of preparedness that will help the health sector respond to climate change, with emergency power supplies, and heatwaves plans, overall the health sector is not well prepared to respond to climate impacts. Responses to other risks to health from increased ozone, affecting respiratory health; food and water borne disease and threats to infrastructure from extreme weather event were not well developed and pose potentially serious risks.

Climate Commission media advisor Amanda McKenzie advised health professionals to see the issue as an opportunity for the health sector to make a strong case for action to cut emissions that will also benefit public health and urged health professionals to use their respected and trusted role to build community understanding and action.

Ms McKenzie’s final question to the participants: “What can the Commission do to elevate the voice of health professionals on this issue?” is the subject of continuing discussion, and CAHA will share further feedback from members on this subsequently.

The meeting closed with the message that the climate communications evidence suggests that when climate change is talked about as a health issue, people are much more likely to respond as they see it in an individual context and as something that is personally relevant to them, rather than as a global environmental issue which is distant in time and space (“in the future, someone else, somewhere else”).

Coupled with the evidence that action on climate change can help reduce many existing disease burdens, and the esteem with which health professionals are held in the community, this makes for a powerful combination and a great opportunity for health professionals to influence this national and international conversation to help achieve better outcomes for health and wellbeing.

Categories Advocacy, Allied health, Climate, Health, Health policy, Health professionals, Medical, Nursing, Uncategorized
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What’s a climate and health clinic?

by CAHA
April 15th, 2012

CAHA ran its first ever ‘pop-up’ Climate and Health Clinic at the 2012 Sustainable Living Festival.

Here, CAHA Convenor Fiona Armstrong talks about the clinic, about the roving health promoters, and what it means to get a ‘prescription for a healthy planet and a healthy you’.

https://vimeo.com/37793910

Categories Advocacy, Behaviour change, Climate, Energy, Health, Health professionals, health promotion, healthcare, Healthy, Sustainability, Sustainable, Well-being
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Ten lessons for better health

by designscope
February 18th, 2011

CAHA member Bret Hart comments on ex-BMJ editor Richard Smith’s Ten Lessons:

It is unfortunate that a serious family illness prevented Richard Smith from delivering the Redfern Oration for the World Congress of Internal Medicine in Melbourne last year, but problems are opportunities in disguise.

He did not increase his ecological footprint but, thanks to webcasting, he delivered his address from his home in the antipodes and this has also enabled many more people than would otherwise have been the case to read and view his important 10 lessons as follows:

Lesson one: Modern clinical medicine is as out of control as the banks and is unaffordable globally.

Lesson two: Inequalities in our world are gross and need to be tackled.

Lesson three: The Victorians eventually couldn’t live with the difference between rich and poor, and we got income tax with substantial transfers of wealth within countries. We now need such transfers between countries.

Lesson four: You can’t have healthy people without healthy places.

Lesson five: We may not like to think in terms of money, but we have to pay close attention to costs—returning to the utilitarian roots of public health.

Lesson six: How we die may make a huge difference, and there are positive signs of the compression of morbidity. We must promote the idea that death is normal and a friend.

Lesson seven: New challenges need new ways of thinking and behaving.

Lesson eight: ideology can get in the way of progress.

Lesson nine: developing countries don’t have to follow the disastrous path of developed countries but can leapfrog their failures.

Lesson ten: the rich can learn from developing countries.

It is lesson 4 that has particular relevance to CAHA as Richard explains, “…healthy places will begin to disappear as our planet becomes sicker. We need a healthy planet in order to have healthy places, and luckily what is good for individuals—avoiding motorised transport and exercising more and eating more fruit and vegetables and fewer animal products– is also good for the planet.”

But all the lessons are relevant to CAHA. For example one of the key messages from the Marmot Review was that tackling social inequalities in health and tackling climate change must go together.

The message for me is that the major changes required to tackle failing health systems and the urgent need to develop alternate approaches is interconnected with the need to do the same for climate change.

You can see Richard’s presentation at http://www.3four50.com/v2/index.php?page=video2&cat=8&subcat=22&p=1 and read his full blog here

http://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2010/07/09/richard-smith-rediscovering-public-health-through-global-health/

Categories Health policy
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