Climate Solutions in Your Work

As a health professional, there are many ways that you can engage in climate action in your work. Just as health is directly impacted by climate change, there are climate solutions that directly protect and improve health. And since the health sector produces a significant amount of carbon emissions, health professionals can lead in sustainability and emissions reduction work.

Provide health care services and patient education informed by climate impacts.
Lead on a public health approach to increase resilience and preparedness to climate impacts, incorporating in an equity frame to ensure that those at most risk are protected.
Reduce emissions within your health care facility.

Clinical Care & Patient Engagement

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First, engage with the tools here: practice the conversation starters to engage patients, distribute ClimateRx badges to your colleagues, organize a Climate for Health Ambassador Training to get more people on board, and share the other tools on this site.

Having more of your peers engaged with these simple tools can make it a lot easier to build to larger actions.

In partnership with Harvard School of Public Health C-CHANGE, Americares has launched the Climate Resilient Clinics Toolkit. This includes printable factsheets in English and Spanish for patients, clinicians, and administrators on:

These resources provide actionable and clinically relevant advice for providers and patients, such as how extreme heat affects the care for patients with diabetes or dementia. And they include practical guidance for clinic administrators to be prepared for these events.

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The Boston Children's Hospital Pediatric Environmental Health Center has developed printable tools that describe the impacts of climate change on health in plain language, provides an action plan for patients, and outlines community resources to support them. This includes individualized tools for heat, extreme weather, asthma & allergies, nutrition, infectious disease, sea level rise & flooding, mental health, and climate advocacy.

The tools are available in English and Spanish.

Public Health Resilience and Adaptation

Outside of the clinical setting, public health practitioners can help to drive meaningful action that address the immediate impacts of climate change on community health.

The CDC framework, Building Resilience Against Climate Effects (BRACE), provides a structure and tools to improve preparation and resilience to climate impacts. You can be a leader on climate solutions and bring immediate health benefits to your local community.

Review the BRACE framework and its stepwise approach to increased preparedness and resiliency.
Assess whether your local or state jurisdiction is using a BRACE framework in its public health departments.
Work with your colleagues to strengthen and advance BRACE initiatives.
Advocate for greater commitment to public health preparedness and resilience in the face of climate change.

The impacts of climate change will affect communities of color, lower-income communities, and other vulnerable groups first and worst. To be effective at protecting health, these programs must embed justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion.

The APHA JEDI toolkit focuses on implementing the BRACE model with an equity lens. This toolkit describes different vulnerabilities and risk factors to climate impacts, provides guidance on how public health planners can engage these groups in the BRACE process, and provides case examples of different jursidictions using an equity lens to more effectively implement their BRACE program.

Sustainability and Emissions Reduction

About 8.5% of all greenhouse gas emissions in the US are from the health sector. Hospitals can make incredible improvements to overall emissions through a range of activities including their energy source, building efficiency, ambulance fleet, supply chain, and more efficient use of medical supplies. Since climate change is such a profound risk to health, reducing emissions is a key climate solution that protects health.

First, make sure your facility, practice, or organization has signed the White House/HHS Health Sector Climate Pledge! The pledge includes a commitment to:

Reduce organizational emissions by 50% by 2030 and achieve net-zero by 2050
Designate an executive-level lead for their work on reducing emissions by 2023 and conduct an inventory of Scope 3 (supply chain) emissions by the end of 2024.
Develop and release a climate resilience plan for continuous operations by the end of 2023.

You can get started with projects to reduce emissions at your facility today!

If there is already a sustainability task force or a "Green Team", join them and encourage others to do the same!
Use the Practice GreenHealth Emissions Calculator to assess your facility's emissions. This tool includes action plans to immediately start reducing emissions.
Assess how you and your team can be more efficient, through actions like improving waste management, switching to more plant-based food, or working with your supply chain to be cleaner and more efficient.

With any or all of these actions, your efforts will be stronger with more people on your team. Use the ClimateRx badges, educational resources, and the Climate for Health Ambassador Training as a way to recruit more people to this work.

Together, by emphasizing the health benefits of climate solutions, we can drive action that will reduce emissions and protect our patients, communities, and families.