nursing
Q&A with Barbara Sattler: Championing the fight against climate change as a health crisis
Nurse Barbara Sattler pioneers a crucial shift in health care, addressing climate change as an urgent medical crisis that demands innovative solutions.
In short:
- Sattler emphasizes the critical need for health professionals to understand and communicate the health impacts of climate change effectively.
- She uses simple analogies to explain complex issues, like comparing the earth's warming to the rapid heating of a car in the sun, to make the science accessible.
- Sattler advocates for community resilience and stresses the importance of preparing health professionals to address the health risks associated with a changing climate.
Key quote:
“Go up just a couple of degrees, we start to feel crappy. One or two more degrees after that we start to have physiological changes. If we stay at 104 for a while, we’re in real trouble.”
— Dr. Barbara Sattler, founding member of the Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments
Why this matters:
Understanding the intersection of climate change and health is essential for mitigating its impacts on our well-being. Sattler's work illuminates how health professionals can play a pivotal role in this effort, signaling the need for a broader societal shift toward sustainability and resilience in the face of ongoing environmental challenges.
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Nurses play essential roles in reducing health problems due to climate change
In a statement, the American Academy of Nursing warns against the rollback of climate protective standards and calls for community-based initiatives that support populations most vulnerable to the health consequences of climate change.
It's important, as noted climate scientist and science communicator Ed Maibach of George Mason University said in a tweet: Nurses are stepping up to fight climate change and protect health.
The American Academy of Nursing has 2,500 members, or fellows, and seeks to advance health policy, practice and science through better nursing practice. The statement was authored by two nurses who also hold Ph.Ds: Patricia Butterfield, professor and associate dean of research at Washington State University's Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine, and University of Massachusetts professor emeritus Jeanne Leffers.
Butterfield and Leffers focus attention on two policy streams: Upstream, where efforts center on mitigating the problem of climate change, and downstream, related to disaster response. From the report:
Nurses play essential roles in both reducing and responding to the health consequences of climate change. Not only are they critical to every facet of health promotion and patient care, nurses are also trusted messengers of health information and serve as essential personnel during all phases of disaster response.
One key upstream recommendation:
"Educate the public so that they understand the connections between their health and climate health," they write. "An informed citizenry is needed if health protective policies are to be enacted and supported."