Clinicians Need More Education on Climate-Related Health Issues, Expert Says

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The U.S. healthcare workforce needs better training on issues involving climate change and health, Katie Huffling, DNP, CNM, said Wednesday at the White House Climate and Health Forum.

"To effectively and quickly address the climate health emergency, we need a health workforce who is educated on environmental health and is utilizing this information in their practice, but unfortunately, climate change is not routinely incorporated into health professional education," said Huffling, who is executive director of the Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments. "We know that no matter what patient population you work with, they are already feeling climate impacts. Without having environmental content in their training, health professionals are not able to provide the most effective care to their patients."

Although students are clamoring for this content, "many faculty report feeling like they don't have the expertise to effectively include climate and health content in their courses," Huffling noted. And while organizations like hers are working to expand health professionals' education on climate and health issues, "more is needed to fully support faculty and saturate health, professional education and training with this content," she said.

Aaron (Ari) Bernstein, MD, MPH, director of the CDC's National Center for Environmental Health, emphasized that "the true measure of progress on climate change is not measured in molecules of carbon dioxide; it is measured in the health of people in this country and around the world."

As a pediatrician, "I have seen the effects of climate change in our nation's children firsthand," he said. "I know that climate change and health isn't just about the heat, the hurricanes, or the disasters. What it means to our healthcare system is a story about the opportunity we have to create healthier lives for our nation's children, for the communities that are hardest hit."

Bernstein, like many speakers at the conference, put particular emphasis on extreme heat. He cited the importance of team efforts to combat climate change, giving as one example a joint project by the CDC and the National Weather Service. "Everyone right now can go to cdc.gov/heatrisk, type in your ZIP code," and find out the risk for heat-related illness in their geographic area, he said. "That was not possible just a few months ago ... for the first time, at a given time, you can understand 7 days in advance whether temperatures are going to be a problem for health. And that's different than the heat index. The heat index is important, but it's not a health metric. This is about our health."

John Podesta, senior advisor to President Biden for international climate policy, pointed out that July 21 was the hottest day on Earth to date, but "that record lasted for exactly 1 day because July [22] was hotter still, and that really is the shape of things to come."

"The consequences of a rapidly warming planet aren't just about the loss to coral reefs or the ice sheets of Greenland and our Antarctica and attending weather patterns that result," he said. "It's about the daily impact today on people's lives and health."

"This week, scientists concluded at least 47,000 people perished in Europe last summer from extreme heat," Podesta pointed out. "Warmer, wetter conditions make it easier, it has been noted, for infectious diseases like malaria, dengue, and Zika to expand into new areas in the Pacific and Central America and infect more people," and usually those most vulnerable to climate change effects come from poor countries.

"That's the great irony, in my view, of climate change -- if you think about it at a global level, the people who contribute the least to the problem suffer the greatest harm," he said.

Sarah Kapnick, PhD, chief scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, announced that her agency, along with HHS and other federal agencies, released a National Heat Strategy Wednesday to help protect communities from extreme heat. "This will aid federal agencies in developing science-based solutions and improving resources, communications, and decision-making related to hazardous heat," she said, calling it a "first-of-its-kind strategy for the U.S. to address extreme heat." The strategy includes the Heat Risk tool mentioned by Bernstein as well as clinical guidance for health professionals.

Victor Dzau, MD, president of the National Academy of Medicine, said his organization has issued a "Grand Challenge" to itself on climate change, health, ad equity, describing it as a "bold public/private partnership." The challenge includes four areas:

Finding ways to communicate climate issues to the publicFiguring out a role for biomedical practitioners and scientists to contribute to climate mitigation and adaptationWorking across sectors like agriculture, energy, and transportation to make sure they include a "health lens" in their decision-makingCreating a research agenda, which is about to be released One outgrowth of the challenge is an initiative to accelerate movement on climate and health issues, Dzau explained. So far "we have close to 750 hospitals signed up under this to commit to and working on climate and health. And this is very exciting for us, because we want to get everybody under this tent."

Joyce Frieden oversees MedPage Today’s Washington coverage, including stories about Congress, the White House, the Supreme Court, healthcare trade associations, and federal agencies. She has 35 years of experience covering health policy. Follow

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