Climate and health professionals will be at Hempstead-based Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell for the first ever Climate & Health 2023 conference on Oct. 21 and 22.
The conference is organized in part by the Global Consortium on Climate Health and Education and is designed to “address climate change as an existential crisis and the greatest public health threat of our time,” according to a news release about the event.
The international medical meeting will provide the most up-to-date research and clinical findings related to climate change and health. It aims to shed light on healthy climate mitigation and adaptation measures while facilitating the education, interest and career paths of health care professionals, students and trainees.
“We are thrilled to be able to host the first-ever worldwide comprehensive interdisciplinary meeting on climate and health at the Zucker School of Medicine,” Dr. Adam Stein, chair and professor for the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Zucker School of Medicine and conference planning committee member, said in the news release. “We hope the Climate and Health 2023 conference will help expose the issues surrounding climate change and health and how those of us in health care can work together with climate professionals to respond to the health impacts of climate change.”
More than 100 in-person and hundreds more virtual attendees are expected at the conference, which will bring together researchers and clinicians from six continents to discuss climate health impacts. The conference will kick off with a welcome and opening remarks by Dr. Marcalee Alexander, a physical medicine and rehabilitation physician and editor-in-chief of The Journal of Climate Change and Health.
“The health and mortality risks from climate change are encircling the globe and are multiplying,” according to Alexander, who founded Sustain Our Abilities, an international organization that addresses the health impacts of climate change and works to expand disability-inclusive climate action. “Health care professionals need to work on preventing these risks, similarly to how they work on smoking cessation or prevention of diabetes.”
Keynote speakers will include Nalleli Cobo, co-founder of the South Central Youth Leadership Coalition and recipient of the 2022 Goldman Environmental Prize for Environmental Justice, and Kyle Hill, assistant professor at the University of Minnesota, School of Public Health, Division of Environmental Health Sciences. Hill is an enrolled citizen of the Turtle Mountain Band of the Ojibwa Tribe, a member of the Dakota Sisseton-Wahpeton Sioux Tribe, and the Lakota Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe and will speak about “Principles of Climate Justice and Sovereignty of Indigenous Approaches to Adaptation.”
Climate & Health 2023 is the first worldwide comprehensive interdisciplinary meeting to bring together healthcare professionals in this arena – from students to subject matter experts – from a wide range of medical and healthcare disciplines to discuss the anticipated impact of the climate crisis on health, wellness, and disparities.
“The impacts of climate change will touch every human life, therefore planetary health is human health,” Dr. Eva Rawlings Parker, a dermatologist and associate editor of The Journal of Climate Change and Health, said in the news release. “However, those impacts disproportionally affect women, children, the elderly, communities of color, Indigenous Peoples, and the Global South, so we as health care professionals have a crucial charge to address disparities and protect and improve health in the face of climate change.”
Ethical considerations, healthcare sustainability, and communication are key topics, The final day of the conference will provide a comprehensive review of the “State of Specialties” covering the specific ways in which climate change is affecting the health of patients treated in a wide variety of medical and surgical specialties.
For more details and information, visit www.climatehealth2023.com.
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