Climate Change and Health: The big issue
On 17th June we (Jane Grose and Janet
Richardson) joined the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), the
Campaign for Sustainable Healthcare, and healthcare professionals at The Climate Coalition #forthelove of climate change lobby at Westminster.
Our banner, supporting the University
logo and the slogan ‘Climate Change is a Life and Death Issue’, had been
carefully designed and made during discussions about what politicians and
healthcare professional bodies should be doing about sustainability and climate
change.
Approximately 10,000 people lined the streets
around Parliament to lobby their MPs to take action on climate change. Meanwhile,
discussion in the House of Lords focussed on the
Climate Change Act and steps the Government would need to take in order to
decarbonise Britain by 2050. At the lobby we managed to talk with Ben Bradshaw
MP about the need to be proactive, and to address climate change and health in
a positive way, stressing the links between good health promoting activities
(reducing meat consumption, being more active - cycling etc) and the associated
benefits to the environment.
Before the Climate Change lobby we had a meeting with Policy Advisors at RCN HQ to discuss possible action the RCN could take to support its members to become more active on sustainability issues.
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| Jane and Janet outside RCN HQ with Mark Platt (RCN Policy Advisor), Rebecca Gibbs (The Centre for Sustainable Healthcare), Alice Monro (nurse, climate and health activist). |
The
RCN is moving this agenda forward through a number of initiatives, for example they
are members of the Climate Health Alliance, have
responded to and are signatories to both NHS Sustainable Development Plans
(2010-2015, 2015-2020). Through Bernell Bussue’s good offices (RCN Director
London Region) they made a public intervention in support of the proposals for
London’s segregated cycle highways, citing pollution reduction and its
associated health benefits as one of the key reasons for doing so. The RCN
Congress this year provided an opportunity for a debate submitted by the Welsh
Office on Climate
Change and Health. The resolution: That this meeting of RCN Congress urges
Council to lobby governments within the UK to take all actions to prepare the
UK health services for the effects of long term climate change was passed (448
(98.53%) for; 31 (6.47%) against, 3 abstained).
The
interest the RCN and its members are taking in climate change and health are
very timely. The Lancet Commission report on
Climate Change and Health published on 17th June shows that climate
change is already having significant health impacts, and calls for co-ordinated
action for health professionals and Government. The launch of the Lancet
Commission report included discussion
on twitter.
Dr Peter Carter, Chief Executive & General
Secretary of the RCN commenting on the Lancet Commission report said
climate change: is an issue that our
health services cannot afford to ignore. Our over stretched health
services are already straining, and unless we reconfigure them to be
sustainable they will find it hard to withstand the increase in demand that
climate change will undoubtedly bring.
On
the same day as The Lancet report was published, a summit took place in the US
at the White House on climate change that included leading environmental health
nurses and healthcare professionals. President Obama talked of the need to find
out how medical and healthcare schools were integrating climate change issues
into education!
The
recent publication of the pope’s encyclical Laudato Si’ and the Lambeth Declaration on Climate Change highlight
issues of social justice and inequalities (including inequalities related to
health), and further add to the need for societies to take action.
So
what can we do? Climate change and sustainability present an urgent and
pressing challenge to healthcare. At Plymouth University we have already embedded
sustainability topics into our nursing curriculum using an evidence-based
approach
that draws on our own research as well as that of others. However there is more
to do to raise awareness and develop mitigation and adaptation strategies. We
can continue to support this agenda through inter-disciplinary research and
education, collaborating with other organisations, such as the RCN and Centre for Sustainable Healthcare
policy-makers and sharing the sustainability
and health training tools we have already developed. Our work
with other Universities across Europe, and in particular the NurSusTOOLKIT project will enable us to develop and share
educational materials to nurses and other health professionals to deal with the
current and future challenges of
maintaining a sustainable healthcare system within a changing climate.
For more information see: Sustainability,
Society and Health Research: http://www.plymouth.ac.uk/pages/view.asp?page=32806
Janet Richardson
Professor of Health Service Research, Faculty of Health and Human Science, Plymouth University
