Climate/Energy Series: Climate Change and Health Literacy for Health Professionals

Overview

Session Description

Health care professionals can play a vital role in preparing their medical staff, facilities and communities to be resilient and cope with the health and environmental effects of climate change. Please join us for a look at the casual relationship between health care and climate change.

Objectives

Demonstrate the causal relationship between health care and climate change
Illustrate the benefits of mitigation and adaption strategies to reduce the impact of climate change on the health care sector
Make specific recommendations on how to improve health and wellbeing and reduce greenhouse gas emissions
Educate health care staff on how to best communicate the relationship between climate and health impacts to patients & families

Presenter

Robert Gould, MD, Associate Pathologist, Kaiser Hospital, San Jose CA
Robert M. Gould, MD graduated from Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and has worked as a Pathologist at Kaiser Hospital in San Jose since 1981. Since 1989, he has been President of the SF-Bay Area Chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), and in 2003 was President of National PSR.Since 1986, Dr. Gould has been a leading member of the Peace Caucus of the American Public Health Association, for which he is current Chairperson, and in 2009 APHA awarded Dr. Gould the prestigious Sidel-Levy Peace Award. Dr. Gould has been recognized as a leading expert on the environmental and public health impacts of nuclear weapons, and has been a contributing author to chapters on health impacts of nuclear weapons and nuclear terrorism in “War and Public Health” (2008) and “Terrorism and Public Health” (2011) published by Oxford University Press.

Since 1992 has been a leading member of the Environmental Committee of the Santa Clara County chapter of the California Medical Association (CMA), and through this work has authored and submitted numerous resolutions adopted by CMA as policy--including resolutions calling for preventing dioxin waste from medical facilities, preventing human exposure to mercury, reducing the use of pesticides, protecting farmworkers from toxic pesticide exposures, replacing medical devices containing phthalates (DEHP) from Neonatal Intensive Care Units, reducing air pollution, for binding reductions in global climate change-causing gases, for the abolition of all weapons of mass destruction, and for avoiding accidental nuclear war.