Pediatric Neurosurgeons, Planetary Health, and Sustainability

              Pediatric neurosurgeons take on awesome responsibilities for saving and improving the lives of children who cross our paths directly in our work as clinicians.  Our field provides additional benefits to children beyond those we treat directly through our research efforts, which help shed light on the causes and optimal treatment for neurosurgical and related conditions.  The ASPN also supports advocacy for public health that can help keep children safe from preventable harm.

              The health of our planet, including pollution, ecosystem and biodiversity loss, and most urgently, issues of the changing climate, have been described collectively as the greatest public health threats of our time.  In 2023, over 200 health journals simultaneously published an editorial calling on the United Nations, political leaders, and health professionals to recognize that climate change and damage to the natural world are causing a global health emergency 1. The outsized effects on the health and well-being of children have long been recognized 2 3. This is a global problem, including consequences seen with increasing frequency and severity in North America (https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/billions/overview).

             While it may seem that planetary health including climate change is an issue far removed from the field of pediatric neurosurgery, there is in fact a direct link to the health of our patients. For this reason, the ASPN joined the Medical Societies Consortium on Climate and Health (MSCCH, https://medsocietiesforclimatehealth.org/ ), a national organization of medical professional specialty societies as well as state-based chapters that aims to inform healthcare providers on the wide-ranging intersection between climate change and health, and support action and advocacy efforts.

What are some of the ways planetary health is relevant to your practice?

-          Climate and health globally

-          Climate anxiety – statistics/figures

Yale Climate Opinion Maps 2024 - Yale Program on Climate Change Communication

-          Carbon footprint of healthcare

What are some of the things you and your colleagues can do?

-          On behalf of our patients and all children, be informed and support ASPN’s advocacy efforts on climate change and planetary health. The MSCCH creates public statements, some of which ASPN signed as a member organization, regarding issues such as undoing Clean Air Act regulations, repealing Environmental Protection Agency’s Climate Rules, and firing climate assessment scientists.  For more details on these statements please see https://medsocietiesforclimatehealth.org/statements/.

-          Stay informed on local, state, national, and global climate policies.  There are many ways to do this, including the MSCCH’s extensive and useful Resources page (https://medsocietiesforclimatehealth.org/) with peer-reviewed articles, policy updates, blogs, slide decks, trainings, toolkits, research resources, and other information.  Other sources of good data include INSIDE CLIMATE NEWS, New York Times Climate Forward, the World Health Organization (https://www.who.int/health-topics/climate-change#tab=tab_1)  and many others that you can find locally.

-          Consider working within your practice and healthcare system to support efforts to decrease unnecessary waste and carbon emissions associated with healthcare.  Resources to help with this include Practice Greenhealth (https://practicegreenhealth.org/), the National Academies (https://nam.edu/our-work/programs/climate-and-health/), and you can check if your health system already is a member of the Health Care Climate Council (https://us.noharm.org/initiatives/health-care-climate-council).

-          Consider the environmental impacts of other professional activities. When planning professional activities, take carbon emissions into account.

-          Learn which choices have the biggest impact in your personal decisions.  A good resource for this is a Carbon Calculator (e.g. https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/carbon-footprint-calculator or https://www.nature.org/en-us/get-involved/how-to-help/carbon-footprint-calculator/).  Your carbon footprint is not always what you think!  There are an increasing number of apps – like people do with step counts for fitness – that help you reduce your own impact. Spend a small amount of time – maybe with your family or colleagues – just learning the basics.  It will make you an informed consumer, clinician, and citizen.

-          Get involved with the ASPN Advocacy Committee and the interest group on climate change.  To do this, contact Ann-Christine (Tina) Duhaime ([email protected]), Hassan Akbari ([email protected]), or David Hersh ([email protected]).

-          Know the climate positions of your elected officials. Encourage others to do the same. For those wanting to get more involved with this issue, consider the nonpartisan Environmental Voter Project, which aims to identify and encourage voting of people with environmental issues as significant concerns, without suggesting specific candidates (https://www.environmentalvoter.org/).  This organization makes it easy to help with phone banks and other outreach activities.  MSCCH also has nonpartisan “get out the vote” strategies for those interested in this type of outreach. 

 

1.           Abbasi K, Ali P, Barbour V, Benfield T, Bibbins-Domingo K, Hancocks S, et al. Time to treat the climate and nature crisis as one indivisible global health emergency. BMJ (Online). 2023;383:p2355.

2.           American Academy of Pediatrics Council on Environmental Health. Global Climate Change and Children's Health. Pediatrics. 2015;136(5):992.

3.           Perera F, Nadeau K. Climate Change, Fossil-Fuel Pollution, and Children’s Health. The New England journal of medicine. 2022;386(24):2303-14.