‘If not you, who?’: Tips for clean air advocacy among busy clinicians
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Key takeaways:
- When getting into climate advocacy, clinicians should have an understanding of redlining.
- Engaging in your local community and translating science are ways to advocate for clean air.
HONOLULU — As global warming progresses, advocacy by clinicians who can speak about the health impacts of rising temperatures is crucial in evoking change, according to a presentation at the CHEST Annual Meeting.
In her presentation, “Climate & Clean Air Advocacy as a Full-Time Clinician,” Erika M. Moseson, MD, pulmonary & critical care physician with Legacy Health in Oregon, discussed where clinicians should start when deciding to become an advocate, ways to get involved in their local community and the importance of balancing advocacy with their clinical and research responsibilities.
Where to start
If a clinician wants to start advocating for clean air, Moseson first recommends that they obtain a deeper understanding of the history of the Home Owner’s Loan Corporation and redlining. She specifically highlighted the book, The Color of Law, because it explains how redlining started.
Knowing about redlining and how it impacted your own neighborhood is crucial in climate advocacy because this historic event also resulted in redlining of the air, Moseson said.
One notable study that demonstrates this concept is by Weaver and colleagues, which showed that Hispanic white children had a higher likelihood of residing closer to freeway and major nonfreeway roads than non-Hispanic white children. The study also showed that children with more than 50% Native American ancestry vs. those with 50% or less Native American ancestry faced a more than 40% increased chance for living in these types of areas.
Living close to these areas resulted in greater odds for asthma, specifically among non-Hispanic white children with more than 50% Native American ancestry (OR = 2.16; 95% CI, 1.26-3.69).
Moseson personally started her advocacy journey by speaking to her local legislature in Oregon about the dangers of tobacco and diesel pollution. This then evolved to writing testimony for bills on these issues with the Oregon Thoracic Society chapter.
Ways to advocate
As a busy clinician herself, Moseson realizes that clinicians do not have all the time in the world to dedicate to climate and clean air advocacy. To help clinicians, she offered some tips on how to start advocating with limited time.
Her first tip is to think about where you already have community and engage in it. Some examples of places you can connect with others include your hospital, your parks department and the communities within local churches and schools.
“You can advocate for electric vehicle chargers in all these locations ... planting more trees [and] ... a whole host of things that will help both improve clean air and help reduce carbon emissions now,” Moseson said.
Moseson also noted that conferences, such as CHEST and ATS, are great places to practice advocacy. During ATS 2023 in Washington, D.C., she participated in a clean air climate rally at Capitol Hill.
Another way to advocate in your community is through translating science, and clinicians are already experts in this area, Moseson said.
“You're already an expert in taking these studies ... and helping the person in front of you trying to figure out which study applies to them and how to make life-and-death decisions with imperfect data; that’s what you do every day in the ICU and clinic,” she said.
It is also important to connect with values and human stories when advocating for clean air because you want to help people realize how the current air quality standards are impacting them and their neighborhood.
Moseson said there are an abundance of resources to help clinicians educate others, including the American Lung Association’s annual State of the Air report. This report and other resources emphasizing the importance of clean air are great for busy clinicians so they do not have to “invent the wheel” when it comes to advocacy.
Being an advocate often means going out into your own city/county, so Moseson recommends knowing your state house representative, your local representatives and your senator depending on where you live.
“You do not have to change people’s minds, you just want to switch the behavior to something that cleans up the air and stabilizes the climate,” she said. “Don’t spend any time trying to change someone’s mind about what the government means.”
When advocating gets difficult, Moseson said it’s important to remember that policy does work. California is a prime example of this because they have passed several laws for clean air, have focused on achieving safe air quality and have seen pollution levels drop.
‘Whatever time you have is enough’
When starting the process of advocating for climate and clean air, it is more important to begin than to get it perfect, Moseson said.
“The world will be saved by B+ work,” she said. “If you’re waiting to get perfect, it’s too late. We’ve got 7 years [to get CO2 emissions down to stay at 1.5 degrees Celsius, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change].
“A little effort goes a long way,” she added. “Anything that is worth doing is worth doing badly. Whatever time you have is enough.”
To help spread clean air advocacy beyond her local area, Moseson started a podcast, Air Health Our Health. This also allowed her to say everything she had been saying on several different occasions at different places all in one spot.
It should be noted that burnout is a common experience among clinicians, so Moseson emphasized the importance of knowing that it is okay to say no when getting involved in this work.
“This is a very important phrase to learn that one of my mentors taught me, ‘I do not currently have the bandwidth to give that project the attention it deserves,’” she said during her presentation. “You acknowledge it’s super important. It’s a really great project. You’re delighted they’re on it. You [just] don’t have the ability right now.”
Although it takes some effort, Moseson said advocacy is good for both clinicians and their patients, and clinicians will most likely already be good at it because they have a background in translating science.
“If not you, who?” she said. “We’ve got 7 years to get those CO2 emissions down and clean up the air.”