Follow-Up

CLIMATE CHANGE EMERGENCY RESOURCES

FOLLOW-UP is a list of strategies and resources that
CLIMATE CHANGE EMERGENCY MEDICAL RESPONSE
provides to doctors and other concerned professionals who want to disseminate and teach others what they have learned about
the global climate change planetary emergency.

Climate change is a key public health challenge. Health professionals need to understand the consequences of climate change for health, take appropriate steps to protect health, and communicate the facts to the public and policy-makers....

Climate change, an environmental health hazard of unprecedented scale and complexity, necessitates health professionals developing new ways of thinking, communicating, and acting.... Communicating about the risks posed by climate change requires messages that motivate constructive engagement and support wise policy choices.

— Howard Frumkin, MD, DrPH
Guest Editor, Special Issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine on Climate Change, Volume 35/Issue 5 (November 2008)

IDEAS FOR DISSEMINATION AND FOLLOW-UP

1.	Stay up to date on essential developments in the science of climate change on international progress in mitigating climate change
2.	Forward climate change emergency declarations and position statements to colleagues, within the profession and cross-professionally to professional associations at all levels (local, regional, national, international) to politicians at all levels (local, regional, state or provincial, national)
3.	Write (and speak) about the declaration of a climate change emergency to print and online newspapers and magazines (local, regional, national, international) in articles and letters to the editor to professional newsletters and journals to relevant blogs in media interviews (health care professionals are often seen as credible sources)
4.	Teach medical students and others about the global climate change emergency hospital or clinic staff and visitors patients in the waiting room, via posters or pamphlets local teachers and schoolchildren
5.	Give presentations about the global climate change emergency and how to respond locally (for example, to service clubs) at medical meetings and professional conferences on radio or television (remember local cable stations) on YouTube to politicians and policy makers

Check out these online resources that you can use in presentations:

Dr. William H. Calvin, author of Global Fever: How to Treat Climate Change, speaking in Beijing at the World Bank's CGIAR Crawford Memorial Lecture
Changing the Chemistry of the Atmosphere, a 9-minute presentation by Holmes Hummel, PhD, a specialist in climate policy
UNEP's Gathering Storm: The Humanitarian Impact of Climate Change, a series of short and poignant videos (if temporarily unavailable, please try again soon)
Several salient downloads related to global climate change and transformative solutions from David Wasdell's Meridian Programme in the UK
Global Warming: Implications for Human Health, an editable powerpoint presentation created by Physicians for Social Responsibility in the USA
Worldwatch Institute's State of the World 2009: Into a Warming World, especially A Safe Landing for the Climate (pdf) by W. L. Hare
Final Warning: Climate Science Update, a short video summary from Greenpeace Australia Pacific
CARE International UK's The Human Face of Climate Change, a photo gallery showing that "the world is already feeling the impacts of climate change and it is the poor who are suffering most"
Global Climate Change and Children's Health (pdf), a report from the American Academy of Pediatrics

Who better to talk to the public about the threats of global climate change to their health and wellbeing — and the future of their children — than healthcare professionals?

To any doctor [or other healthcare professional] who feels they have even a reasonable rudimentary knowledge of these types of issues, please: go and see your local federal pollie [politician]! You will be taken seriously because you’re a doctor, with scientific credibility and no conflict of interest.... I truly believe that we, environmentally literate and concerned doctors, have an enormous amount to contribute in the struggle to make governments wake up and act decisively.

— Dr. Martin Williams, Doctors for the Environment Australia

The mission of CLIMATE CHANGE EMERGENCY MEDICAL RESPONSE includes strengthening the influence and ability of health care and other concerned professionals to advocate for the rights of vulnerable regional populations and future generations to live safe from the risks of disastrous and catastrophic global climate change, through dissemination of what they have learned.

The hope is that by taking on the challenge of educating professional associations, and asking them to use their influence to help mitigate the climate change emergency, doctors and other professionals will become competent in the science of climate change — which will help them find their voice to speak out for future generations and give them the confidence to follow up on what they have learned by sharing it with others.

In today's world, the internet allows new learning to go "viral" — in other words, it is easy to multiply the impacts of one's learning by sharing it online. Person-to-person is another way that professionals can use their influence to spread the word that we have entered an unparalleled planetary emergency due to global climate change.