Climate &amp; Health Alliance

Forum on Climate and Health: the Research, Policy and Advocacy Agenda

by CAHA

November 23rd, 2013

Forum on Climate and Health: the Research, Policy and Advocacy Agenda

November 2013

This forum brought together health and medical researchers, health and medical professionals, students, environmental educators and community members to discuss the research, policy and advocacy agenda needed in Australia on climate and health.

Participants issued a Joint Statement following the forum expressing their collective concern at the current lack of recognition of the health effects of climate change by governments, businesses and the broader community.

Click on this link to read the Joint Statement from Participants. The accompanying media release is here.

You can read a ‘storified’ report of the Twitter stream from the event here.

Listen to this podcast from the forum prepared by Beyond Zero Radio presenter Vivien Langford.

Categories Advocacy, Allied health, Behaviour change, Climate, Emissions, Energy, Energy policy, Environment, Ethics, Extreme weather, Health, Health policy, Health professionals, health promotion, healthcare, Heat, Heatwaves, Medical, Nursing, Psychology, Public health, Public policy, Research, Social policy, Sustainability, Sustainable, Transformation
Comments (0)

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
Comments (0)

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.