Public health action on climate change
Today, we have published our joint statement on climate change with the Faculty of Public Health (FPH) encouraging public health professionals to embed climate action into routine practice.
The statement highlights the crucial role public health professionals play in protecting communities from the health impacts of climate change, drawing on their expertise in system leadership, translating evidence into action, risk and vulnerability assessments, and advocacy.
It also brings together practical resources to support public health teams and strengthen wider action across the system.
The statement comes at a crucial time as communities across the UK face more frequent and intense heatwaves linked to climate change, with significant impact on health, including increasing the risks of developing, or exacerbating, conditions such as asthma, and other lung and heart problems.
ADPH and FPH joint statement on climate change
As professional bodies representing public health in the UK, the Association of Directors of Public Health and the Faculty of Public Health recognise that climate change and ecological degradation pose a severe and growing threat to human and planetary health.
We also know that the impacts from climate change fall hardest on those who are most vulnerable including marginalised and lower-income groups, people whose health is already compromised, and younger and future generations.
As we come together as a global community to drive forward action to tackle climate change and mitigate its impacts on our health, the public health community is uniquely equipped to lead vital work in this area, and has a responsibility to embed climate-conscious principles in their work.
Public health professionals have skills and expertise that are essential to addressing the challenge of climate change including system leadership and transformation, translating evidence into action, conducting risk and vulnerability assessments, advocating for communities, and strengthening prevention and preparedness.
Public health professionals also understand that action to tackle climate change will protect and improve health not just by reducing the direct impacts of this threat, but through realising many co-benefits for our health.
Cleaner air, more active travel, greener spaces, better insulated homes and healthier diets all offer these co-benefits, and we see that interventions aimed at addressing climate change will often accelerate delivery of the health outcomes we are already working towards.
In this context, ADPH and FPH are calling for all public health professionals to go further in embedding work to tackle climate change in their routine practice.
We recognise the pressure facing the public health workforce in the UK and internationally, and will continue to develop and promote resources to support our members in this work, as well as advocating for wider action on climate change and additional resources for the public health system.
FPH’s website includes existing resources such as the Climate and Health Sustainability Toolkit; a collection of CPD resources covering topics from sustainable food systems and air pollution to fuel poverty; and a major report on what UK health organisations are doing on the climate and ecological crisis to better understand gaps in action.
Available via our website is a collection of resources on climate change including key messages and national and local recommendations.