Core action strategies for public health professionals to decrease contributions to climate change

The debate about whether global environmental change is real has been superseded by an appreciation that climate change is not only occurring but taking place more rapidly than anticipated. Global climate change poses an unprecedented challenge to human health, both as a direct threat and as a promoter of downstream risks. Health impacts include the direct effects of heat, including heatstroke and risk of heat-attributable cardiovascular and pulmonary mortality; influences on severe weather, flooding, and drought; the contribution of heat to air pollution; changes in the distribution of vector-borne and waterborne diseases and their transmission; and threats to food production.

Public health nurses and other public health providers face the challenge of becoming informed about these issues and acting as agents of change in their communities. Core strategies will be presented for use by public health nurses and other public health providers to enable them to: 1.) promote individual behavior change and organizational-level change to decrease contributions to climate change; 2.) educate patients, workers, and their communities about the relationships between policy, sustainable behaviors, global environmental changes, and threats to health and security; and 3.) demonstrate leadership and engage collaboratively with a wide spectrum of sectors to identify and promote actions that address climate change.