Ahead of UN Climate Summit, Major US Health Systems Call for Climate Health Action

This week, world leaders will come together for a United Nations Summit to address one of the greatest threats to human health: climate change. Margaret Chan, director general of the World Health Organization, recently called climate change the “defining issue for the 21st century” and with good reason.

The widespread and serious impacts of climate change are apparent: temperature-related illness and death, injuries and illnesses due to extreme weather events, the spread of infectious diseases, increases in water borne illnesses, and wide-ranging impacts from air pollution. Although no one can escape climate change, our most vulnerable people – children, the elderly, the poor, and people with underlying health conditions – face the greatest risks.

"The health care sector’s economic, political, and moral influence offers significant opportunities to lead us all in adapting to the effects of climate change and the risk it poses to human health." 

Should climate change remain unchecked, it will continue to exacerbate the global burden of disease, increase health care costs, and overwhelm public health infrastructure worldwide.

As the frontline stewards of individual and community health, hospitals are in a unique position to address climate change through their own operations and in communities they serve. That is why we created the Health Care Climate Council, a network of leading U.S. health systems representing 179 hospitals, 485,000 employees, and more than $90 billion in annual revenue. Together, we’re committed to strengthening the health sector’s response to climate change and we call on others in the health sector to provide leadership in three fundamental ways.

We must address our massive energy use and help lead the transition to renewable energy. Systems like the University of California and Gundersen Health System are already aiming to become net zero energy users or even carbon neutral in their resource consumption, leading as examples for the U.S. health care sector and broader society. 

In the face of extreme weather, we need to build more resilient health systems. When the lights went out in most New York hospitals during super storm Sandy, the ones that kept functioning had energy saving co-generation technology on site. This kind of resilience, which also reduces climate impact, needs to become standard practice in our hospitals.

It does not end within our own operations. We also need to advocate for local, state, and national policies that will ensure a sustainable and healthy future. The health care sector’s economic, political, and moral influence offers significant opportunities to lead us all in adapting to the effects of climate change and the risk it poses to human health. 

We call on all hospitals – in the United States and throughout the world – to join us in taking significant and measurable actions that the mitigation of climate change demands. We have an opportunity and an obligation to protect the communities we serve from the health impacts of climate change. In doing so, we can work together to restore the delicate balance between human and environmental health and offer hope for a healthy planet.

The Health Care Climate Council

Established by Health Care Without Harm, the Health Care Climate Council is a leadership network of hospitals committed to strengthening the health sector’s response to climate change.

Current members include: Cleveland Clinic, Dignity Health, Gundersen Health System, Inova Health Systems, InterMountain Healthcare, Kaiser Permanente, Tenet Health, ThedaCare, University Hospitals, and Virginia Mason.

For more information about the Council, contact Eric Lerner, Director of Health Care Without Harm’s Climate Program.