Climate Clinic

Welcome back to Be the Expert! The article we are bringing to you today was first published in the journal “Science of the total environment”, in February this year, titled, “California's early transition to electric vehicles: Observed health and air quality co-benefits”. Authors were; Erika Garcia, Jill Johnston, Rob McConnell, Lawrence Palinkas, and Sandrah P. Eckel. In previous episodes, we have spoken about air quality in the urban environment and some of the strategies to mitigate this, including transitioning to electric vehicles. In this study, the authors looked at whether respiratory health and air quality co-benefits are already noticeable at the relatively low levels of zero-emissions vehicles (battery electric, plug-in hybrid, hydrogen fuel cell vehicle) adoption in California. 

Link: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36739036/

Dr. Terry O’Connor, Dr. Nuzhat Islam, and MD-PhD candidate Douglas Fritz walk with us through their clinical case highlighting the impact of climate change on arboviral infectious disease. Check out their written case (adaptable for medical school curricula) at Climate Resources for Health Education here: https://climatehealthed.org/course/arboviruses/

Dr. O’Connor is an instructor of Emergency Medicine at the University of Washington and Director of the Diploma in Climate Medicine at the University of Colorado Climate and Health Program. Dr. Islam is a second year internal medicine resident at the University of California in San Diego and a co-founder of the Planetary Health Report Card. Douglas is a second year MD/PhD student at the University of Colorado and one of the vice chairs for Medical Students for a Sustainable Future.

In this episode, we speak with medical student James Sullivan from the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine at Case Western Reserve University about the process of creating an integrated climate-health curriculum at the medical school.

If you want to learn more, check out this journal article about the Cleveland Clinic’s climate-health curricular design: 10.1097/ACM.0000000000004376

Episode written by Genny Silva, Produced by Natasha Sood, and Edited by Liana Haigis

In this episode, the Code Green team speak with Dr. Heather Whelan, Kelsey Barter, and Hossein Moein Taghavi about the connections between heat, air pollution, and neurodegenerative disease. Dr. Whelan is a Professor of Medicine at University of California San Francisco, Kelsey is a medical student at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, and Hossein is a research assistant at Stanford University School of Medicine. Dr. Whelan, Kelsey, and Hossein wrote this case as part of the Climate Resources for Health Education (CRHE) initiative (Case OSS9.2). Join us as we dive into this patient case!

To learn more about CRHE head over to climatehealthed.org. 

Episode written by Genny Silva, Produced by Natasha Sood, and Edited by Liana Haigis

In Episode 10, Adesh speaks to Dr Aletha Ward (co-Founder of Climate Action Nurses (CAN)), who talks about the organisation's role in enabling rapid healthcare decarbonisation through climate education for nurses in Australia.

https://www.climateactionnurses.org/

In our latest show, Marc and Adesh discuss the findings from a scoping Review that was published recently in the journal, 'Neurology'. The article was titled "Impacts of Climate Change and Air Pollution on Neurologic Health, Disease, and Practice". The authors were Shreya Louis, Alise K. Carlson, Abhilash Suresh, Joshua Rim, Mary Ann Mays, Daniel Ontaneda and Andrew Dhawan.

Article: https://doi.org/10.1212/WNL.0000000000201630

In this fascinating episode, tune in to hear from Dr Melissa Frick, who is a chief resident in Radiation Oncology at Stanford University and serves as co-chair on the Greening the Clinics Initiative of the Stanford Healthcare Resident Safety Council. Find out about the exciting initiatives Melissa and her team have been undertaking at Stanford, and what Radiation Oncology can be doing to move towards zero-carbon care.

Resources:

ARRO Climate Health, Equity, and Sustainability Taskforce (CHEST) interest form: https://forms.gle/o6tCvC3xL86trJPi6

NorCal Brachytherapy Waste Audit Toolkit (fill out form to gain access to toolkit): https://forms.gle/o6tCvC3xL86trJPi6

Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine (IPEM) Sustainability Committee on Twitter: https://twitter.com/IPEMEnvironment

GreenHealth Lab (co-founded by radiation oncologist); https://greenhealth.ucsf.edu/

Scientific letter that documents energy consumption of LINAC per patient course, and identifies “Standby” as phase with greatest energy consumption: https://www.advancesradonc.org/article/S2452-1094(22)00275-5/fulltext?dgcid=raven_jbs_aip_email

In Episode 18, Marc and Adesh dive into an article recently published in the Lancet Planetary Health, titled "Hospitalisations for cardiovascular and respiratory disease among older adults living near unconventional natural gas development: a difference-in-differences analysis". The authors were Kevin Trickey, Zihan Chen and Prachi Sanghavi. Tune in to find out how the fracking boom in Pennsylvania affected the health of residents and why using natural gas as a bridging fuel detrimentally affects our health.

Article: https://doi.org/10.1016/S2542-5196(23)00009-8

In this landmark study published in the Lancet Planetary Health by Altman and team, titled "Associations between outdoor air pollutants and non-viral asthma exacerbations and airway inflammatory responses in children and adolescents living in urban areas in the USA: a retrospective secondary analysis", the authors link specific air pollutants to unique molecular pathways of airway inflammation and also demonstrate that air pollution exacerbates asthma independent of any triggering virus. Join Adesh and Marc to find out more!

Article: https://doi.org/10.1016/S2542-5196(22)00302-3

In this episode, Adesh speaks with NHS Consultant Dr Alex Wilkinson on the environmental impact from asthma care, and more specifically metered dose inhalers. Dr Wilkinson shares his thoughts on what respiratory medicine needs to be doing in order to move towards zero or low carbon care.

Article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9056443/

Website links:

1. https://www.greenerpractice.co.uk/high-quality-and-low-carbon-asthma-care/

2. https://greeninhaler.org

3. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4952075/