Policy Points The US health care system faces mounting pressure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change; motivated institutions and an engaged health care workforce are essential to the development, implementation, and maintenance of a climate-ready US health care system. Health care workers have numerous profession-specific and role-specific opportunities to address the causes and impacts of climate change. Policies must address institutional barriers to change and create incentives aligned with climate readiness goals.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Climate change has been shown to be directly linked to multiple physiological sequelae and to impact health consequences. However, the impact of climate change on mental health globally, particularly among vulnerable populations, is less well understood.
Objective: To explore the mental health impacts of climate change in vulnerable populations globally.
Aims: To examine the perceived knowledge, attitudes and beliefs regarding climate change and health of academic faculty and students in programmes for health professionals and to identify barriers/facilitators to and resources required for curriculum integration.
Design: Cross-sectional survey eliciting quantitative and open-ended responses.
Methods: A 22-question survey to assess climate-health knowledge/attitudes/beliefs was distributed to all students and faculty (n = 224) at one academic institution in the United States.
Climate change represents a looming health challenge and a critical area for nursing leadership at all levels of organizations and settings. With a lens on The Future of Nursing 2020-2030: Charting a Path to Achieve Health Equity, addressing climate change-related health consequences should be a major focus and spotlight for nurses and nurse leaders with a lens on individuals, communities, populations, and from a national and global perspective.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFExtreme heat contributes to heat-related illnesses resulting from heat intolerance, which is the inability to maintain a thermal balance to tolerate heat stress. In the United States, heat-related mortality for older persons has almost doubled in the past 20 years. Other populations at risk for heat-related illness (HRI) include children, pregnant people, those who work outside, young people participating in outdoor sports, and at-risk populations such as Black, indigenous, and populations of color.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe purpose of this integrative review is to examine recent literature on the intersection of SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19 novel coronavirus) and climate change that will lead to a greater understanding of the complexities of the urgent pandemic linked with the emerging climate crisis. A literature search for peer-reviewed, English language, literature published since the pandemic emerged was conducted using Cumulated Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), PubMed, and the Cochrane Library. The final sample yielded a total of 22 commentaries, editorials, discussion papers, and a research study that explicitly addressed the intersection of COVID-19 and climate change.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFClimate change is an urgent public health problem that has looming implications and associated deleterious health consequences. The intersection of climate change and health has broad implications for health professionals in a variety of settings but especially for ED settings. Climate change is already affecting human health and health systems-which includes impacts on ED care.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFClimate change is the greatest public health threat of the 21 century and is associated with environmental degradation and deleterious health consequences. In 2019, the Lancet Commission Report on Health and Climate Change: Ensuring that the Health of a Child Born Today Is Not Defined By a Changing Climate (Watts et al., 2019) examined the critical health issues that children will face in the era of climate change.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis chapter addresses the development and advancement of the Center for Climate Change, Climate Justice, and Health (CCCCJH) in the School of Nursing at the MGH Institute of Health Professions, the first nurse-led center emerged from the overwhelming evidence of climate change and its associated deleterious health consequences. The Center steering committee developed a mission, vision, and core values as well as a logo to guide the first year of initiatives and galvanize the efforts for the future. Workshop and symposium development, implementation, and evaluation are discussed.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Health professionals have a key role in addressing the health impacts of climate change at several levels: direct patient care, client and community education, health professions education, and through advocacy and health policy development.
Method: Recognizing that nurses are the first line in health education, nursing faculty at the MGH Institute of Health Professions developed the first nurse-led Center for Climate Change, Climate Justice and Health (CCCCJH).
Results: A steering committee of nurse climate change scholars and interested faculty developed a mission, vision, core values, and a strategic plan for the CCCCJH and are working on integrating climate change topics into nursing curricula at all levels.
Background: In 2000, the United Nations (UN) introduced the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), described as a global movement with the primary aim of ending world-wide poverty ("Millennium Summit," 2000). The second phase of the project, known as the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) agenda offers an increased emphasis on lessening the mitigating factors associated with climate change and adapting to the negative effects of climate change. Nurses are in the unique position to address the health-related impacts related to climate change through community health approaches aimed at education and promotion of environmental stewardship.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: Despite its near complete eradication in resource-rich countries, rheumatic heart disease remains the most common acquired cardiovascular disease in sub-Saharan Africa. With a ratio of physicians/population of 1 per 10,500, including only 4 cardiologists for a population of 11.4 million, Rwanda represents a resource-limited setting lacking the local capacity to detect and treat early cases of strep throat and perform lifesaving operations for advanced rheumatic heart disease.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: Climate change is an emerging challenge linked to negative outcomes for the environment and human health. Since the 1960s, there has been a growing recognition of the need to address climate change and the impact of greenhouse gas emissions implicated in the warming of our planet. There are also deleterious health outcomes linked to complex climate changes that are emerging in the 21st century.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFImportance: Rheumatic heart disease (RHD) in the developing world results in critical disability among children, adolescents, and young adults-marginalizing a key population at its peak age of productivity. Few regions in sub-Saharan Africa have independently created an effective strategy to detect and treat streptococcal infection and mitigate its progression to RHD.
Objective: We describe a unique collaboration, where the Rwanda Ministry of Health, the Rwanda Heart Foundation, and an expatriate humanitarian cardiac surgery program have together leveraged an innovative partnership as a means to expand Rwanda's current capacity to address screening and primary prevention, as well as provide life-saving cardiac surgery for patients with critical RHD.
Background: The caring relationship between individual health care providers and patients is a critical component of healing. However, caring can result in physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual symptoms in providers that can interfere with their capacity to enter into these relationships.
Purpose: The aim of this study was to evaluate whether auricular acupuncture is an effective tool for reducing health care provider stress and anxiety and, second, to determine if auricular acupuncture impacts provider capacity for developing caring relationships with patients.