In a webinar on environmental health equity Wednesday, thought leaders shared strategies for addressing climate change, which has been called the world’s greatest health threat.
The panel was hosted by the National Institute for Health Care Management (NIHCM) Foundation, and featured speakers from the HHS Office of Climate Change and Health Equity, the Environmental Defense Fund and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts.
All three speakers stressed the importance of community-led approaches.
“Communities move at the speed of trust,” said Heather McTeer Toney, vice president of community engagement at the Environmental Defense Fund. When solutions are rushed, they hurt the very communities they aim to serve. Strategies must be highly intentional. “Sometimes moving slower is moving faster,” McTeer Toney said.
In order to drive improved outcomes, health organizations should be aiming to understand how specific trends affect specific populations over time, said John Balbus, M.D., interim director of the Office of Climate Change and Health Equity. For instance, the elderly tend to be most affected by heatwaves and pollution, whereas low-income communities are also affected by molds and more extreme weather events.
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts is striving to be conscious of its own footprint and responsibility, said Lindsey Butler, the organization’s director of climate and health resilience. Part of that work involves working with companies that are also making efforts to become more sustainable. There is power in the consumer dollar—and large healthcare stakeholders have enormous spending power. Where they go, the market will follow, she said.
Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, many of the organization’s employees have worked remotely, a likely permanent arrangement for some, Butler explained. BCBS Massachusetts wants to preserve some of the green policies it developed for its buildings by incentivizing employees working from home to partake in sustainable practices like composting. It also has an employee volunteer program, through which it lends out help to community-based organizations.
It’s only fair that if advocates expect communities to implement changes in lifestyle that would lead to better outcomes, those changes must be explained, Butler said. Educating people on the intersection of climate and health is key. “As a health communicator we want to help people learn about those things in a very accessible and easy way,” Butler said.