C2E2 Annual Lecture | A Healthy Response to Climate Change

Courtney Howard

Thursday, Sept 27, 2018
3 – 4:30 pm
VGH Paetzold Lecture Hall
899 West 12 Ave, Vancouver BC

For too long we’ve put health and the environment in different boxes. The work of our generation of healthcare providers and researchers is to bridge the two, to understand that optimizing planetary health, “the health of human civilization and the state of the natural systems on which it depends” must be our goal. One of our most urgent tasks is to plan and implement a healthy response to climate change – called the “greatest threat to global health in the 21st century” by the World Health Organization. Happily, solutions exist which improve health right now: the Lancet says that tackling climate change could be the greatest public health opportunity of our time, and calls on the health profession to provide leadership to help drive the low-carbon transition. Progress has begun, work is accelerating, and the team is building: come learn specific targets for action and research that will channel our efforts into the healthy response to climate change that our patients and our children deserve.

Dr. Howard is a UBC and McGill-trained Emergency Physician in Yellowknife who is Board President of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment. She has researched wildfires and menstrual cups and contributed to advocacy on active transport, plant-rich diets, health impact assessments, carbon pricing, coal phase-out, and hydraulic fracturing. Dr. Howard was first author on the Lancet Countdown 2017 Report: Briefing for
Canadian Policymakers. She represents CAPE on the Global Climate and Health Alliance board, most recently at COP23.

Free tickets here