What medical professionals can do to take climate action [PODCAST]

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“As health professionals, we have the platform to enact change within our own institutions, as well as local and federal governments. We must elect leaders and officials who spearhead climate action. We must reduce the carbon footprint of healthcare. And we must educate our colleagues and our patients about the impact of climate change on health.

We need every single one of us to take action. Our patients’ health depends on it.”

Sarah Hsu is a medical student. She shares her story and discusses the KevinMD article, “5 things medical professionals can do to take climate action.”

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Hosted by Kevin Pho, MD, The Podcast by KevinMD shares the stories of the many who intersect with our health care system but are rarely heard from.

Transcript

Kevin Pho: Hi, and welcome to the show, where we share the stories of the many who intersect with our health care system but are rarely heard from. My name is Kevin Pho, founder and editor of KevinMD. Today on the show, we have Sarah Hsu. She is a medical student, and she co-wrote the KevinMD article “5 things medical professionals can do to take climate action.” Sarah, welcome to the show.

Sarah Hsu: Thank you so much for having me.

Kevin Pho: We’ll get into your article in a little bit, but first off, can you share your story and your journey to where you are today?

Sarah Hsu: Yeah, absolutely. I’m originally from Los Angeles, and I did my undergraduate degree at Brown University. I studied sociology there, and then I matriculated to Brown as a medical student and also as a master’s student in the Primary Care Population Medicine program.

I’ve always had an interest in environmental studies, and when I matriculated at Brown, I realized there really wasn’t a community for that here. So, along with Natasha, my co-writer for this article, I founded, or was one of the founders of, Medical Students for a Sustainable Future. We also co-host a new podcast called Code Green: The Climate Smart Health Professional, with the goal of educating health care professionals about climate and health.

Kevin Pho: Wonderful. And you and Natasha co-wrote this KevinMD article, “5 things medical professionals can do to take climate action.” But before you get into the article, talk a little about that intersection between medicine and climate change.

Sarah Hsu: Yeah, absolutely. This is a question that we get all the time. People know about climate change, but they really don’t know about some of the impacts climate change has on human health. I think the best way to summarize it is that it really intersects with everything: dermatology, cardiology, and pulmonology.

I think one of my favorite examples is that, because of climate change, in Rhode Island we are the fastest-warming state in the continental U.S. Because of that, we are expected to have four times more heat waves in 2050 than we are having now. This has an impact especially on vulnerable patients, like elderly patients and pediatric patients. We know that on hotter days, in places that are next to the freeway or next to toxic facilities, children are more likely to have asthma attacks, for example. So these are just some of the things that we’re thinking about when we’re thinking about how climate change might be impacting human health.

Kevin Pho: And during your first few years of medical education, has there been any formal inclusion of climate change in some of the courses that you’ve been taking?

Sarah Hsu: Very little, but we’re actively working to change that. At Brown University, I co-lead the Planetary Health Task Force, which has the goal of integrating a four-year longitudinal curriculum on climate change, environmental degradation, and how that impacts health disparities at universities and medical schools across the U.S. We have, I think, close to 20 medical schools that have participated in the Planetary Health Report Card, which is a student-led, metric-based report card to measure how our medical schools are addressing planetary health in our curriculum. So these changes are actively underway.

Kevin Pho: Excellent. So now let’s get into the article that you co-wrote, and it’s titled “5 things medical professionals can do to take climate action.” Now, for those who didn’t read the article, can you just walk my audience through it and share the story of why you and Natasha decided to write it?

Sarah Hsu: Yeah, absolutely. We published this right before the 2020 election, and at that time, Natasha and I were having hundreds of talks with students, residents, and physicians about how to get tapped into climate work. I think people can feel very nervous and scared about how big of a problem the climate crisis is, and we wanted to make sure people had tangible tips and tricks ready to take action. So we just compiled a lot of the resources that we were giving everyone into an easily accessible article.

Among the things at that time, the first was helping elect climate champions into office. We need leaders in policy who will be passing climate-smart policies, so we listed some of the local and national resources to get involved with that. I think the second pointer we had was just to join a physician or medical student advocacy group. Taking collective action is one of the best ways to get involved and to tap into existing work.

I think the third thing that we had mentioned was working on greening your department or your hospital clinic. As health care professionals, we are sworn to first do no harm, and so it’s ironic that the U.S. health care system contributes nearly 8 to 9 percent of annual greenhouse gas emissions. We are part of the problem, and we contribute to the adverse health outcomes of our patients, so we need to take action to green our health care systems as well.

The last two things that we had talked about were, one, just to start learning about climate change and health. We listed a couple of ways to get CME credit for this, as well as just free videos that you can access online. Something that didn’t make it into this article was our new podcast, which is called Code Green: The Climate Smart Health Professional, so that’s another free way that you can get climate and health education on the go. And then the last thing was that if you are an expert or you have some expertise in this area, we encourage people to educate their peers. So host grand rounds, teach medical students, or teach your peers about this, because the more people we have working on this, the faster we can mobilize our community.

Kevin Pho: Well, those are all wonderful tips. I think that, to no one’s surprise, as medical students and doctors, time is very, very limited. So I guess the question that all medical students have asked is about the highest-yield actionable tips. So I guess if you were to give the highest-yield actionable tips to both medical students and practicing clinicians, what would some of those specific tips be?

Sarah Hsu: The first thing I would say is you don’t have to do this alone. As a first-year medical student, I felt so lost and overwhelmed. I knew I wanted to do something in climate and health, but I had no idea where to start. How do I do research? How do I engage in advocacy? How do I integrate climate and health into med ed? I cannot do that alone. But there are hundreds of physicians and medical students out there working on a variety of different projects. So I would say start with a community and just pick one project and run with it, so you don’t have to do everything at once.

Kevin Pho: Excellent. And you did mention some communities, but off the top of your head, what are some specific ones that you recommend?

Sarah Hsu: Yeah. For medical students, we have Medical Students for a Sustainable Future. We are a group of 400 medical students across over 83 medical schools now who work on a variety of projects, including curriculum, advocacy, and research. And then on the physician side, there’s the physicians network. Health Care Without Harm has a physicians network that gathers by region and also by specialty, and so going on the Health Care Without Harm website would be the best way to start.

Kevin Pho: We’re talking to Sarah Hsu. She is a medical student, and she co-wrote the KevinMD article “5 things medical professionals can do to take climate action.” Sarah, you did mention some resources at the end of your article, but if we are interested in learning more about that intersection between climate change and medicine, what are some resources off the top of your head that are the most useful?

Sarah Hsu: Yeah, absolutely. For free ones, I would definitely go to Emory School of Medicine. They have a free archive of lectures online given by leading physician climate advocates across the country. And I’ll also repeat again that our podcast is really pushing for short, 10- to 15-minute episodes that you can listen to on your drive to work that will tackle different aspects of climate change and health. Again, it’s called Code Green: The Climate Smart Health Professional.

Kevin Pho: And you mentioned that you’re trying to get a concurrent curriculum involving climate change into medical education. So I guess, what’s the response of some of your professors, and I guess of the school itself, in terms of incorporating some of these changes into their curriculum?

Sarah Hsu: It’s really interesting. I think, as we’re having this conversation, it’s a very new topic. As more and more of our faculty learn about the impacts climate change has on human health, they have been very, very receptive. I think two weeks ago, I just presented the Planetary Health Task Force to all the clerkship directors at Brown University, and they were very interested and very engaged and had a lot of questions about what other institutions are doing and what the best practices are. So I think change is happening across medical schools, and I think places that we can look to for examples would be University of San Francisco, Stanford University, and Emory University School of Medicine, which are all doing incredible work in this area.

Kevin Pho: All right, my final question. What’s your take-home message that you want to leave with the KevinMD audience?

Sarah Hsu: I would just say find a community and just pick one thing to get started, whether it’s med ed, sustainability research, supporting local environmental justice groups just by donating money, or just committing to learning one thing about climate change and health. These are all steps in the right direction.

Kevin Pho: Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for sharing your time and insight, and thanks again for being on the show.

Sarah Hsu: Thank you so much for having me.

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