On April 9, 2015 the White House held a roundtable working session on education and climate change, which was attended by Dean Lynn Goldman and Melissa Perry, chair of the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health at Milken Institute School of Public Health (Milken Institute SPH) at the George Washington University, as well as deans and leaders from 30 medical, public health and nursing schools from across the country. The roundtable is part of a long list of actions unveiled by the White House aimed at highlighting the health impacts of climate change and encouraging data sharing. As part of the event, the deans pledged in a commitment statement to train the next generation of students for the challenges related to climate change. “As leaders responsible for educating the Nation’s health professionals of tomorrow, we are keenly aware of our obligation to ensure that they are fully prepared to address all health risks, including those resulting from the impacts of climate change,” the statement says. In addition to extreme weather such as droughts and storms, there are health problems related to climate change including heat waves that can lead to heat-related deaths. The Administration also notes that the prevalence of asthma has more than doubled in the last three decades, a jump that has been linked to rising temperatures in the United States.
The roundtable meeting was chaired by White House Advisor Brian Deese and the assembled deans and public health leaders included those from Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Columbia, Emory University and others.
Check out the White House Fact Sheet on Climate Change, which includes the roundtable working session and other actions the Administration and others are taking to address this growing problem.Watch a video of President Obama talking about how climate change threatens public health.
To highlight some of the public health impacts of climate change, the Milken Institute SPH will be hosting a town hall meeting on Friday April 24, 2015 featuring the authors of a newly released draft report by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, “Impacts of Climate Change on Human Health in the United States: A Scientific Assessment.” At the event, the report authors will talk about the key findings and attendees will have a chance to comment on the report. Find out more and register for the event.