Your doctor is likely concerned about climate change and the impact it may have on patients' health. So a research team led by two Harvard doctors is training health care workers to take action.
Three-quarters of health professionals believe climate change will harm patients, according to a survey published in The Lancet. Healthcare workers are also among the most trusted professionals in the United States
Dr. Gaurab Basu, one of the scholarship's founders, said the combination of professional attention and public trust provides an opportunity for healthcare workers to speak out about climate change and organize in their communities. But many health professionals aren't sure how to get started because community organizing isn't taught in medical schools.
So Basu, a physician who holds multiple positions at Harvard University, teamed up with colleague Pedja Stojicic to create the Climate Health Fellows Program. The free Zoom-based fellowship teaches participants how to build teams within their communities and guides them through the process of planning and implementing a community-oriented project of their choice.
Yale Climate Connection spoke with Basu about the scholarship and why climate activism is a good fit for health care professionals.
Yale Climate Connection: Where did your passion for climate change activism come from?
PhD. Gaulab Basu: From the very beginning of my career, I definitely felt that as a health professional it was not enough to just wait for bad things to happen to people's health. Housing, poverty, racism, and injustice are affecting the health of my patients. So I'm very passionate about explaining how these structural issues impact my patients and talking about policy.
I had a thunder moment [about climate change] When the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report was released in 2018, it really helped me realize how much climate change is impacting issues of global health equity that I care about.
I’ve experienced a lot of grief, worry, and worry about the effects of climate change and know what I need to do. I spent a lot of time trying to understand the role of the primary care physician. I started to really realize that health had to be at the center of the conversation about climate change because I think doctors, nurses, social workers and [other] Health professionals can make this job very humane.
So climate change advocacy feels really natural to me – to speak out about the importance of climate change mitigation and adaptation, and that we need to have health professional voices in these structural and policy-led spaces in order for us patients make changes.
YCC: What is the unique role of healthcare professionals in advocating for climate action?
Basu: Public health and climate change science are very confusing and complex. So you need experts who can understand what the research is and honestly present it to the public, and be a trusted voice in that regard. My job is to study the question of how climate change affects health, read all the research, and be able to translate and interpret it. So I take that responsibility very seriously.
I think it's important to go to my city council, to go to the state Legislature, to go into public forums and talk about why policies to end fossil fuel use, to end human-made greenhouse gas emissions are important, and that's a good doctor, and explain the toll it's taking on my patients. So I feel very passionate about the fact that we need to be involved in decision-making in order to get the right policies in place.
YCC: Given all this potential, what are the barriers preventing more healthcare workers from participating in climate action?
Basu: I think one of the biggest obstacles is that we operate in a dysfunctional health care system that takes up a lot of our time and energy. So doctors, nurses, social workers, psychologists, we all work very hard – and with care and passion – to care for our patients. This is our core work. This is the basis of our work.
So our experience is that healthcare professionals are well-suited to be ambassadors for climate action, but they are burned out, overwhelmed, worried and lack a sense of community within their local institutions. So they feel very isolated and overwhelmed. My biggest goal for this fellowship is to create a learning space where people can find community, purpose, inspiration, and self-efficacy— [to help] Health professionals see these huge challenges and, rather than being intimidated and paralyzed by them, are able to find their place in this work.
YCC: How does the fellowship work?
Basu: Pedja Stojicic and I wanted to establish a scholarship for health professionals who care about climate action but have never been trained in the skill sets that would make them effective agents of change. This is a six-month online scholarship based on Zoom. People apply in groups of three. We need two health professionals and one non-health professional who is a climate advocate and leader because we want to build bridges. A real problem is that doctors and health professionals are working so much in clinics and hospitals that we have lost touch with the community. This is a way to build bridges beforehand.
We then have monthly workshops that teach how to tell our personal stories, how to tell stories that help people take action, and how to use community organizing skills. We teach people how to build relationships and leadership structures and then implement change strategies.
YCC: How does the scholarship format help address some of the issues you raise about burnout and isolation?
Basu: There’s a lot of in-depth work. What moments in their lives prompted their call to serve? Who are the influential people in their lives? What moments in their lives led them to accept the call to protect our planet and [by] do this, protect [their] patient? So we think deeply about those deeper core values and then help them tell their story about those values—why they’re called to serve. This is called a self-story.
We then help them articulate and craft a story about us – how they tell the story of the communities they work in and the constituencies they work with. What is the story of that group of people? this really helps [the fellows] Feeling connected and community, feeling less isolated because they share values with the people they work hard with.
The story now is one of action and urgency. What issue is so important?
Many story-based works help people discover, [or] Lifting the veil, a sense of purpose. They all have it, but I think doing deep story-based work really helps them understand where they fit into this work and how they want to spend their time building community, having a sense of purpose, and feeling like they can take some action.
The whole idea of community organizing is that you work with people, find your people power, and then use that power to make policy changes in your agency or local community. [So we ask] What is the power analysis in your local community? What are the obstacles? Who are your allies? Who is your opponent? How do you create power among a group of people who think they have no power?
We do intensive workshops on this, and then we help them develop a project during the fellowship. [Each group] Apply for scholarships and be considered for a project. These plans look like decarbonizing hospitals, increasing tree canopies on heat islands, sustainable food systems, and increasing biodiversity in local communities. So these are very inspiring people who are organizing in their local communities, who understand the connections between climate and health, who want to take action, who want to learn specific skills in community organizing and storytelling so that they can be more Effectively that change.
YCC: Do you have a favorite project that you can talk more about?
Basu: our group of people [from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center] Want their hospitals to be decarbonized. The city of Pittsburgh is not an easy place to decarbonize. There are a lot of fossil fuel interests. But three people [from a group of five] Join our fellowship as they build organizational strength. They get people involved in their movement and are able to use that power to get the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center dedicated to [Health and Human Services Health Sector Climate Pledge] Decarbonize hospitals: Cut emissions by 50%, put a director in charge and end emissions by mid-century. By the end of the fellowship year, they had convinced the hospital, from the CEO on down, to make these commitments, and that was a really, really big change.
There's an organization in Chicago that's working on creating tree canopy on urban heat islands by creating Miyawaki forests around heat islands in the greater Chicago area and really explaining the health benefits of heat relief and all the biodiversity benefits that come with increasing tree canopy with a real focus on equity.
So we really push fellows to go out into the community, build partnerships, and see what's been done. I think this work also requires humility, and we learn from community organizations that are already doing very powerful work and what the voices of health professionals can add to achieving some of these outcomes.
YCC: Are you hearing from participants about how this impacts their work as clinicians?
Basu: I think those of us who provide clinical care in the climate and health space want to communicate how climate change affects issues like heat waves and air pollution and allergies and infectious diseases. So it helps, “Hey, I'm a clinician and I really care about taking care of my patients. I also know that these larger issues are affecting my patients and I have a responsibility to protect my patients from these Harm, both at the clinic level and at the policy and community level, so that all has its own implications.
For me, when I was a primary care physician in a community health center, my patients were actually my teachers. When I had the privilege of hearing about their lives, their health, and what was going on in their lives, I had aha moments about what it looks like for humanity to face climate change. So that really impacted the types of policies I wanted to work on, the types of projects I wanted to work on. So I would say it suddenly became a job where the important things – the community work, the policy work – were integrated into the work of the clinic. The work of the clinic feeds into what we want to do at a policy level. It feels very fulfilling.
YCC: What are your expectations for the long-term impact of this scholarship?
Basu: We want to build a long-term community, and we want health professionals to understand their power as effective agents of change. Our approach in this fellowship is to help people find their voice, find their community, and realize that they can be very influential in making change. This is truly inspiring. It can give us a lot of energy and perspective, and keep us going when the work feels so difficult.
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