Doctors Are Becoming Leaders In The Environmental Movement

This summer, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its much-anticipated progress report on climate change. In short, it's not looking good: The 200-plus contributing scientists agreed that we are not reducing emissions fast enough, and without immediate action, the increasing floods, wildfires, droughts, storms, and heat waves we are seeing are only expected to get worse—and quickly.

"Health care is on the front lines of the climate crisis," Amy Collins, M.D., a senior clinical adviser for Health Care Without Harm, tells mindbodygreen. 

Collins, a Boston-based emergency medicine physician, recalls a patient who came to her clinic during the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in 2017. The storm caused the woman, who had recently been diagnosed with cancer, to flee her home and come to America seeking treatment. "That was really the first time I was clear that I was seeing a patient who was directly impacted by climate," Collins recalls. "I found it very interesting and telling that her first point of contact in the United States was with health care. I think we can anticipate seeing more of such patients who migrate as a result of a climate-driven extreme weather event or other climate impacts."

And it's not just during times of crisis that clinicians are noticing a shift. Neelima Tummala, M.D., an ENT physician and climate advocate with the George Washington University Medical Faculty Associates, shares that in her practice, patients now frequently cite more severe allergies that start earlier and end later in the year than they used to. Research suggests that climate change is extending the pollen allergy season1 and increasing the pollen count2 in the air.

While it's hard to directly attribute a health issue to a warming world and not some other risk factor, Tummala says this doesn't stop her from talking about climate change and its associated threats with her patients. She does so not to "scare people or raise alarm," she says. "I do it to help people understand how the environment they live in is impacting their health."

As more doctors are speaking out about the climate-health connection, more organizations are forming to amplify their voices.

Collins was one of the first clinicians to become involved with Health Care Without Harm, a group working to forge a more sustainable future for health care globally. She notes a huge surge in interest from doctors looking to engage with the cause over the last few years, "as the news we are getting is more and more concerning and as the health connection is getting clearer and clearer." (The physician network she started within the organization in 2018 is now up to 850 members.)

Healthcare Without Harm stands alongside other large coalitions like the Medical Society Consortium on Climate & Health and Physicians for Social Responsibility, and specialty organizations like the American Academy of Pediatrics climate arm and Doctors For Clean Air. Teams of doctors are also organizing in states across the U.S. to influence local policies related to the environment and health.

All of these groups have different approaches and areas of impact. Some are focused on education and writing the dangers of climate change into medical school curricula and textbooks. Others are busy supporting legislation change, writing letters to senators and publicly supporting policies that have climate and health in mind. Others are pushing for the health care sector to decarbonize and reduce its high environmental impact.

However, they are all working to spread the same message: You can't talk about climate without talking about health.

"We have a new professional responsibility to be climate activists in a lot of ways; to talk about climate in every institution we're a part of and anchor the urgency to act on climate as a health imperative, as a health emergency," says Ashley McClure, M.D., the co-founder of the California health care coalition Climate Health Now, which now has over 500 members.

Amanda Millstein, M.D., another co-founder and a primary care pediatrician in Richmond, California, home to the Chevron Richmond Refinery, has a powerful example of what this can look like in practice. In the front-line community where she works, local organizers had been lobbying to restrict pollution from the nearby refinery for years. When the most recent proposal to set stricter emissions limits came out, Millstein and other Climate Health Now members asked those organizers what they could do to help it pass. They did what their community asked of them: They held a press conference on the health impacts of the refineries and spoke to air district board members about the dangers of air pollution. As a result of this team effort, the stricter emissions rule—which was not expected to pass—passed by 19 to 4. 

We predict that doctors will continue to become more vocal about the threats of climate change in the year ahead—which can only be a good thing. 

"When health practitioners and caregivers start to think this way, I'm optimistic that we can make a rapid change and shift the trajectories of disease at many levels—air, water, soil, sea, and the cells in our bodies." Jeffrey Bland, Ph.D., functional medicine doctor and the founder of Big Bold Health, tells mbg.

Furthermore, as we move into the rest of the 2020s, which will be a decisive time for climate action, Collins hopes that physicians can "look through every aspect of health care through a climate lens."

This physician-led movement reminds us that moving forward, every sector of society—from administrators to artists, teachers to technicians—needs to leverage its unique skills to advocate for a healthier world. What role will you play?