Public Health On Call Series: Climate Mondays

In this special series, Guest host Shelley Hearne, DrPH, Deans Sommer and Klag Professor of the Practice, and director of the Lerner Center for Public Health Advocacy, talks with leaders working at the intersection of climate change and public health, offering a can-do approach to one of the most daunting issues of our time.

How to Be a Climate Change Advocate: Gina McCarthy On Helping People Want Change Without Being Afraid of It

Guest host Shelley Hearne, director of the Lerner Center for Public Health Advocacy talks with former EPA leader and inaugural White House National Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy about why climate change is a people and public health problem, not a planetary problem.

How to Be a Climate Change Advocate: Howard Frumkin on How Environmental Health = Our Health, and Why There’s Empirical Evidence For Hope

Environmental health wasn’t always part of the public health portfolio but in recent years “science caught up to the obvious.” Dr. Howard Frumkin, former head of Environmental Health Operations at the CDC and currently senior vice president at Trust for Public Land, talks with Shelley Hearne about the evidence base behind environmental impacts on our health, the political and cultural changes required for the CDC to adopt programs around climate and environment, and why hope for tackling climate change is not only a worthy strategy, there’s empirical evidence behind it. 

How to Be a Climate Change Advocate: Bernadette Demientieff and the People of the Gwich’in Nation Want You To Know That We’re All Connected

Guest host Shelley Hearne, director of the Lerner Center for Public Health Advocacy, brings us eight miles above the Arctic Circle to talk with Bernadette Demientieff, council member for the Arctic Refuge Defense Council and member of the Gwichyaa Zhee Gwich'in Tribe. They discuss the very real impacts of climate change on her community in their day-to-day lives and our global interconnectedness, including why it matters to all of us what's happening in a remote corner of the world.

How to Be a Climate Change Advocate: Persistence is Key In Climate Change Action

In a two-part conversation that begins while facing down a tiny yet fierce migratory bird on the coastal plain of the Arctic National Refuge to a celebration on the south lawn of the White House, guest host Shelley Hearne, director of the John Hopkins Lerner Center for Public Health Advocacy, and David Kieve, president of the Environmental Defense Action Fund, discuss why the new climate bill is so critical, what it took to get this massive piece of legislation to the finish line.

How to Be a Climate Change Advocate: Catherine Flowers on the “Secret Sauce” of Elevating Local Environmental Issues to the National Agenda

Guest host Shelley Hearne, director of the Lerner Center for Public Health Advocacy brings us to the south lawn of the White House for a conversation with Catherine Flowers, environmental justice advocate and a MacArthur Genius Award winner. Flowers talks about working with grassroots advocates, celebrities, politicians, and influencers of all kinds to raise awareness around serious sanitation issues in US cities that we usually associate with underdeveloped nations.

How to Be a Climate Change Advocate: Natalia Linos on Why We Should Embrace the Fact That “All Public Health Is Political”

Today, guest host Shelley Hearne, director of the Lerner Center for Public Health Advocacy, talks with Natalia Linos, a social epidemiologist and executive director of Harvard’s FXB Center for Health and Human Rights, and 2020 Congressional candidate. Linos talks with Hearne about why “all public health is political,” how to approach politics as a public health professional, and the importance of not only naming climate change problems, but getting involved with them “at every level” to advance change.

How to Be a Climate Change Advocate: Making Sure Public Health is Part of the Climate Change Equation

Guest host Shelley Hearne, director of the Lerner Center for Public Health Advocacy, speaks with Jaime Madrigano, Visiting Associate Professor, with the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering at the Bloomberg School, whose research examines the health impacts of environmental air pollution and weather. Together they discuss how health and cost implications must be tied to climate change policies, communications, and real community engagement.

Public Health’s Role at the Intersection of Climate Change and Advocacy

Climate change is an urgent existential threat to public health, so why is it still considered a separate issue and how can public health take on more problem solving to address it? “Problem Solver for Public Health” Dr. Judy Monroe, president and CEO of the CDC Foundation, talks with guest host Shelley Hearne, director of the Johns Hopkins Lerner Center for Public Health Advocacy about lessons learned from tobacco battles, why engaging in politics—but not partisanship—is a crucial asset, and how public health can “make some noise” when it comes to climate change advocacy.

A Climate Change Activist Reacts to the Climate Change Bill

President Biden is poised to sign the historic Inflation Reduction Act that will, among other things, enact sweeping changes to the US energy sector and efforts to fight climate change. Tiernan Sittenfeld, the senior vice president of the League of Conservation Voters, talks with guest host Shelley Hearne about the bill and its game-changing potential for the environment and public health. They also discuss why major climate legislation has failed in the past and what needs to be done to ensure that implementation is successful.

RELATED:

• Public Health’s Role at the Intersection of Climate Change and Advocacy
• Climate Disruption and Our Health