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The duty of a doctor is to respond to risks to patient safety. As trusted professionals there is a great deal we can do to raise awareness and campaign about the climate emergency as a health emergency.

General climate communications

For general information on effective conversations about the climate crisis, have a look at Climate outreach.

This TED Talk, by Katharine Hayhoe (Director of the Climate Science Centre, Texas Tech University), shows how making the climate crisis part of our everyday conversations really does make a difference in raising awareness and normalising the discussion.

See the section on Waiting Room Videos for easy ways to raise awareness amongst your patients.

For medical educators: Here is short video of three primary care educationalists from around the world talking about how their countries were approaching medical education and planetary health/climate change.

Building skills for conversations on climate change and health

The UK Faculty of Public Health Sustainable Development special interest group (SIG) have put together some resources as part of the implementation of the Faculty’s Climate & Health Strategy advocacy workstream, aiming to help public health professionals build the skills they need to act on climate change and health as part of their work. These resources will be very helpful to primary care professionals too.

There are two recorded webinars you can watch – one covering evidence and advice for externally focused communication here, and one sharing experience of internal influencing  here. You can read a blog on how public health professionals can build skills to advocate for climate and health here. Visual summaries from the sessions can also be found on the FPH resource pages here. The summary of the scoping work (including findings from the literature review and the reading list) can be found here.

Engaging GP’s in you local area

If you are keen to get other GPs in your area started on their Green journey, here is a survey, kindly shared by Dr Vasandhara Thoroughgood. Please feel free to adapt it for your area.