Australia’s National Health and Climate Strategy is an important step towards protecting Australians from the significant health threats of climate change, write Prof Eugenie Kayak and A/Prof Angie Bone.
Australia’s National Health and Climate Strategy is an important step towards protecting Australians from the significant health threats of climate change, write Prof Eugenie Kayak and A/Prof Angie Bone.
The Strategy has been informed by extensive consultation with the health community, including First Nations, primary care and aged care stakeholders, it sets out a comprehensive set of foundational actions, and it emphasises prevention, care closer to home and the reduction of low-value, harmful care and variations of care.
Attention now needs to turn to the Strategy’s funding and its rapid implementation to enable the urgent transformational changes required to effectively respond to the health impacts of climate change, while minimising Australia’s health sector’s significant contribution to the problem.
Angie Bone FAFPHM is a public health physician and Associate Professor of Practice in Planetary Health at Monash Sustainable Development Institute in Melbourne. She is a member of Doctors for the Environment Australia and the Public Health Association of Australia.
Eugenie Kayak is an Anaesthetist, Enterprise Professor of Sustainable Healthcare at the Melbourne Medical School, University of Melbourne, Co-convenor of Sustainable Healthcare for Doctors for the Environment Australia and was part of the CMO’s Advisory Group for the development of the National Health and Climate Strategy.