Building awareness of the climate health emergency

Health professionals can be powerful teachers of the links between climate change and health.

Increasing public understanding of the health effects of climate change is crucial, in order to build healthy public policy, strengthen community action for health and reorient health services to respond to the climate health emergency.

Given their health expertise and high levels of community trust, health professionals are uniquely powerful in building links between climate change and health within the minds of their patients, clients, colleagues or the media – all audiences which would benefit greatly from their expertise and perspective.

However, most health professionals are not trained on how to talk about climate change, and their self-assessed knowledge about climate change is low, although their willingness to learn more is high.

We are working to support the healthcare sector to understand and communicate the challenge – and the opportunity – that climate change presents for public health.

How climate change
affects our health

The health effects of climate change are diverse, and affect people differently. Learn about the issue with our
briefing paper.

How to talk about
climate change

We've created a guide to effectively communicate the health impacts of climate change—and the health benefits of climate action—to your patients, clients and colleagues.

How climate action
benefits our health

Climate action has direct benefits for your personal health. Check out the fact sheet for some examples.

Learn how to talk
to the media

Health professionals are the best communicators of the health effects of climate change. We can run media training sessions for those who are new to media—contact us.

10 ways you can act on climate change

Ten actions you can take in your personal life, your professional life and in your community. Taking action often counteracts the anxiety which accompanies climate change.

Australia's biggest
climate-health survey

We ran Australia's biggest climate-health survey, asking 875 health professionals about their attitudes, behaviours and engagement on climate change.

Further context

This work is part of our project Real, Urgent and Now, supported by the Lord Mayors Charitable Foundation for two years (2020-2021).

CAHA is working with partner organisations to understand how health professionals engage with climate change, and the barriers to doing so, to develop resources to empower health professionals to speak confidently about climate and health, and to bring health voices to the media to help inform the public and decision-makers. We are deeply grateful to our project partners for their participation:

We also thank our knowledge partners, who provide advice on communications materials, support program evaluation, and share research on climate and health communications to inform the project: