“You don’t have to get an A, you just have to try.”
DEA started around a kitchen table 22 years ago, when five doctors came together in recognition of our planet’s woes and asked themselves the question, “What can we do to help?”. They established DEA with the mission to “protect health through care of the environment” and started to work.
Now we have 2000 members across Australia working together to educate and alert colleagues, patients, the public and politicians to the requirement for a healthy natural environment for good human health. DEA has led the climate and health movement in Australia, using our professional expertise to establish the health case for environmental protection.
I am continually inspired by the work of doctors around me who do their best to make a difference. I am absolutely privileged to be leading DEA as executive director and certainly hope to inspire our members to continue all the planet-saving work they do.
As WHO director-general Dr Tedros Adhanom Gehbreysus recently said “… we must continue to remind the world that the climate crisis is a health crisis.” Together we doctors are powerful, so let’s do the best that we can. Let’s treat climate change like the health problem it is, and work together for the health of humanity and of our beautiful suffering planet.