Archive for research

Tragic loss and untimely death of CAHA board member, Assoc Professor Erica Bell

by CAHA
July 29th, 2014

The CAHA Committee of Management and Membership is shocked and saddened by the untimely death of Committee of Management member and Expert Advisory Committee member Associate Professor Erica Bell, who died on Saturday following a massive stroke early last week.

Erica has been a tireless supporter of the Climate and Health Alliance (CAHA), attending its inaugural meeting in 2010, serving on its Committee of Management and Expert Advisory group since its establishment, amid an incredibly demanding role at University of Tasmania, previously as Deputy Director, University Department of Rural Health, and more recently in the Translational Health Services Group in the Wicking Dementia Research and Education Centre.

Erica championed and led the development of the CAHA expert advisory group, which has been pivotal to the organisation’s credibility and reputation. Erica was influential in building support for CAHA particularly in the rural and remote education sector, and her innovative approaches to community engagement in climate and health research and emphasis on rural and remote health, as well as her insights into integrating policy and research, were extremely valuable and will influence research for decades to come.

Erica was much admired in the CAHA community and her support of CAHA and its work deeply appreciated.

 

Categories Climate, Health
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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
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Protecting children from climate change

by CAHA
January 8th, 2013

The Climate and Health Alliance is particularly concerned about the health and well-being of children in relation to climate change. Children are particularly vulnerable to the negative effects of climate change and suffer around 90% of the disease burden from climate change.

As part of its advocacy efforts, along with child health researchers and child advocates  the Climate and Health Alliance has written a letter to child advocates and research institutions, asking that they include climate change as an urgent priority area for child advocacy, research, policy and practice.

The letter, co-signed by leading children and health researchers and advocates, sent to all Children’s Commissioners, child health research centres and advocacy groups in October 2012, states:

“We are only beginning to understand the impacts that climate change will have on children’s development, health and mental health. In addition to a greater emphasis on mitigation, more research at the regional and local levels is desperately needed so that we can adequately understand, prepare for and adapt to the impacts of climate change.

Because climate change poses such a significant threat to our children and future generations we believe that child advocate and research institutions have a responsibility to have it as a priority area for advocacy, research, policy and practice. We have attached a list of ideas for inclusion in a research, policy and practice agenda.  

We also believe that, in order to reduce harm to children and future generations, child advocate and research institutions should have a policy to reduce their organisation’s carbon footprint (e.g., by switching to Green power, purchasing carbon offsets for air travel, and monitoring the carbon footprint of suppliers).

As concerned scientists and child advocates we should also publicly call for effective climate change mitigation strategies at the local, national and international levels to help limit the threat to the development, health and mental health of our children and future generations. Strategies to reduce emissions would have the added public health benefit of decreasing the incidence and severity of many chronic and avoidable diseases associated with our high-carbon lifestyle.”

The full text of the letter can be found here.

Responses received by January 2013:

 

Categories Advocacy, Children, Climate, Ethics, Health, Research, Sustainability, Well-being
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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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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:

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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?

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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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