Prescription for the Planet: How Public Health Professionals Can Step Into Climate Advocacy
Co-authored by Surili Sutaria Patel and Rebecca Rehr*
As public health professionals, we are trained to look at the big picture. We track epidemiologic trends, map social determinants of health, and design preventative interventions. But today, the greatest threat to global public health isn’t a novel pathogen or a sedentary lifestyle.
It’s climate change.
From code-red heatwaves overloading emergency rooms to wildfire smoke driving pediatric asthma spikes, the climate crisis is actively unwriting decades of public health progress.
It is easy to feel paralyzed by the sheer scale of the problem. You might think, “I’m a researcher, a nurse, an epidemiologist, a policy analyst; not an activist.” Here’s a little secret: advocacy isn’t an all-or-nothing commitment. It is a ladder.
Your unique voice as a trusted health authority is one of the most powerful tools we have to fight climate change. Here is how you can climb the advocacy ladder and make a systemic impact, meeting yourself exactly where your schedule and comfort level allow today.
Rung 1: Observing & Learning
If you are burnt out, overwhelmed, or just trying to survive your current shift, start here. This is where you only have 5 minutes to engage.
Advocacy at this stage is simply about shifting your perspective. Here’s how:
Connect the Dots in Your Daily Work: Start looking at your current projects through a climate lens.
If you work in maternal health, read up on how extreme heat increases preterm birth risks.
If you work in infectious disease, track how warming vectors are shifting Lyme disease or West Nile virus geography.
If you yourself need support, check out resources on mental health and climate change like “Facing Climate Anxiety: Evidence-Based Skills to Cope with Fear and Overwhelm, Find Meaning, and Take Action” by Jon Gorman PsyD
Diversify Your Feed: Follow national organizations like the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health, American Lung Association, Physicians for Social Responsibility, or the American Public Health Association (APHA), or your state League of Conservation Voters. Let the data come to you.
Rung 2: Endorsing & Signing
If you want to lend your professional credentials to the cause, but you don't have the time to spearhead a campaign, this is the rung for you!
Find Your Group: Join a local chapter of APHA or your state LCV, or your organization’s green team. These groups will give you a deeper insight into issues at the local levels, and open doors for you to lend your professional voice to the conversation. If you have signed up for updates from groups like APHA or your state LCV, those opportunities will come straight to your inbox.
Sign Joint Declarations: Add your name, title, and credentials to open letters, consensus statements, or petitions organized by health coalitions demanding stricter clean air standards or green hospital infrastructure.
Submit Digital Public Comments: When regulatory agencies (like the EPA) open public comment periods on carbon emissions or environmental toxins, use a pre-drafted template from a public health advocacy group to submit a comment utilizing your unique authority as a health worker.
Rung 3: Normalizing & Sharing
This is when you have 15 minutes to spare. Finally, you understand the crisis and how it relates to your work. Now, you’re ready to bring that awareness into your professional circle.
Normalize the Conversation: Speak up in staff meetings, grand rounds, or academic seminars. When discussing a spike in local cardiovascular admissions, bring up the concurrent air quality index (AQI) or heat index.
Share Trusted Data: Use your personal or professional social media to amplify infographics from public health agencies that clearly link climate anomalies to localized health outcomes. When a health professional posts a stat, people listen.
Rung 4: Contributing & Showing Up
You are ready to step outside the office or clinic and invest your time directly into community resilience.
Provide Expert Testimony: Show up to a city council meeting or a school board hearing. You don’t need a long speech. Just two minutes at the microphone to state your name, your public health background, and why a specific local policy (like building a pipeline or cutting funding for urban parks) reduce or worsens the impacts of climate change on community health.
Consult for Local Climate Groups: Environmental justice groups are doing incredible work on the ground, but they sometimes need access to quantitative data to help tell their stories. Offer an hour of your time to help a grassroots group interpret a local health report or review the health framing of their educational materials.
Rung 5: Leading the Movement
You are ready to drive systemic change and organize others.
Publish an Op-Ed: Write a 600-word piece for your local newspaper. Frame a local climate issue, such as a proposed highway expansion, strictly as a public health emergency that will worsen health inequities and pediatric illnesses.
Form a "Green Team" or Coalition: Organize a sustainability or climate advocacy committee within your health department, hospital system, organization, or university. Lead the charge to transition your institution toward net-zero emissions, proving that healthcare can "first, do no harm" to the environment. Remember to not compete or duplicate efforts. To avoid this, look up what other local groups are doing first. If there is another established group, consider encouraging your network to join their coalition.
Conduct Legislative Office Visits: Schedule a 15-minute meeting with your state or federal representatives. While there, share a personal story about a time when your health (or the health of your patient) was directly impacted by a climate event. Then tie it to a policy solution, like clean energy (e.g., how cutting carbon saves money in local healthcare expenditures). Lawmakers are getting messages from environmental activists; they rarely get to hear from the public health professionals managing the fallout.
The climate crisis can feel like a terminal diagnosis, but public health has always been a field of hope and prevention. We didn't eradicate smallpox or drastically reduce smoking rates by staying in the clinic; we did it through systemic, structural advocacy.
Look at the ladder. Where are you standing today? Wherever it is, challenge yourself to take just one step up this month. Our patients, our communities, and our planet are counting on it.
*Guest co-author: Rebecca Rehr is the Director of Climate Policy & Justice at the Maryland League of Conservation Voters. She helps shape the organization’s climate and clean energy policy efforts with a focus on communities that are overburdened by a history of environmental injustice. Rebecca was previously Director of ecoAmerica’s Climate for Health Program, where she worked to build the health voice on climate action. She also serves on the Board of Interfaith Partners for the Chesapeake and on the Maryland Commission on Environmental Justice and Sustainable Communities, and was recently honored among the de Beaumont Foundation 40 Under 40 in Public Health Class of 2023.
