Dr. Renee Salas and colleagues have written an article about including climate in health policy. They have some very specific recommendations, which we will summarize below. Hang on, it gets a bit wonky, but this is very important! Climate change will really affect our health, hospitals and clinics could also be really impacted by disasters and other climate impacts, and there is a lot we can do now to address all this. The big take-away: NOW is the time to act, and there’s a lot we can do!
Things that we need to do for our health policy:
1. Improve our data-driven response, including identifying vulnerable people and evaluating public health interventions.
2. Increase national surveillance for climate-related health risks. (Surveillance is the public health term for keeping track of diseases, where they occur, and who is most affected.)
3. Improve transfer of patient data – during emergencies and disasters, it can get chaotic. We need to be sure information goes with patients when they are transferred.
4. Improve health-care resilience planning – we need a national climate preparedness plan, and especially to help local public health departments which are often underfunded and strapped for resources, so they can respond to health risks from climate change.
5. Decarbonize our health system – hospitals, offices, and clinics can create emissions, and they use a lot of energy. We need to have low or zero emission buildings, clean renewable energy (zero-carbon), energy efficiency, and power purchase agreements that include clean renewable energy.
6. Improve resiliency of infrastructure and supply-chain – hospitals need to use local assessments of risks and threats to plan for climate-resilient buildings and systems (assess heat, flood and storm risk, put generators and switches on upper levels, assess building materials, etc.)
7. Create a health-care workforce that is climate ready – all health professionals need to have knowledge of climate change and its health effects, they need to have a wide range of skills so they can adapt during disasters, and we need core knowledge about climate for each profession and discipline.
8. Improve measures by payers to decrease climate risks – Medicare and Medicaid (and we would add large health foundations can do this too, and perhaps even insurance companies) can promote climate mitigation efforts, and health-related social needs such as housing and utilities. People with breathing machines need electricity, people with diabetes need refrigerators, and more.
9. Payers can incentivize lower carbon use – either through financial incentives, or through payment models.
It’s all important, and there are a lot of things we can do quickly!
Read about the article at the Harvard T.C. Chan School of Public Health.
Read the complete article in the Health Affairs journal.
12/15/2020
