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Helen Clark: The important role health systems can play in climate action

Helen Clark/helenclark.foundation

Dec 16, 2024, 22:27

Helen Clark: The important role health systems can play in climate action

Helen Clark, Former Prime Minister of New Zealand, shared a post on Linkedin:

“In my address as Chair of the Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research to the Health Systems Global Conference plenary on ‘Strengthening Health Systems for Planetary Health’, I spoke about the important role health systems can play in climate action.

The implications of climate change for health and health systems are great, as The Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change documents in its annual reports.

I noted that health systems can improve their readiness to be frontline responders to climate disasters, and that they need to be fully engaged in developing national climate action plans. They can also contribute to a just transition to a netzero future by consciously acting to mitigate and adapt to climate change while also improving health equity.

I called for more climate action policy to be designed with co-benefits for health and for climate, as the Path Finder Initiative has advocated. For example, achieving cleaner air reduces the rate of respiratory illness and should be a major focus.

The World Health Organization estimates that air pollution kills seven million people every year. The Our Common Air Commission is advocating for more investment in clean air.

I said that we live in an age when skilled populist politicians refuse to accept scientific evidence and instead steer a course based on misinformation.

We need to improve public health and science communication so that it reaches beyond academic publications and conferences to wider and diverse publics, and that the populist anti-science narrative must be beaten at its own game.”

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