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The Climate Issue
June 2025 |
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In This Issue:
Once a year, Green Practice News focuses on the health consequences of global climate change. Here we suggest steps that healthcare managers and clinicians can take to protect their patents. We hope you will discover resources to share with your family as well!
- How Funding Climate Resilience Benefits Patient Health
- My Green Doctor Begins Pilot with Weill Cornell Medicine
- MIT Sloan’s Climate Interactive Tool Sheds Light on the Growing Health Crisis of Climate Change
- Tell Us What You Need to Go Green: A Survey from Blue Shield of California
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| How Funding Climate Resilience Benefits Patient Health
250,000 Preventable Deaths Every Year
Climate change is a public health catastrophe—and it’s claiming lives every day.
According to the World Health Organization, climate change will cause an additional 250,000 deaths every year worldwide between 2030 and 2050. These deaths will not be evenly distributed. They will occur where health systems are weakest and climate impacts are harshest—through malnutrition, malaria, diarrhea, respiratory failure, and heat stress.
A new report from the European Investment Bank (EIB) underscores this rising toll. The EIB developed a first-of-its-kind tool to quantify how climate hazards like heatwaves, floods, and poor air quality will drive up healthcare demand across Europe. Their projections show a conservative average increase of 0.5% in the need for healthcare—translating into over 500 million extra days of inpatient hospital care and more than 100 million emergency department visits across Europe by 2050.
But this is not only a European story.
In the United States, extreme weather events and air pollution are already costing the healthcare system over $820 billion annually.
In India, rising temperatures are projected to slash outdoor labor productivity by 15% by 2050, compounding public health and economic stress.
Across Africa, where the climate crisis hits hardest, more than 118 million people in poverty face growing heat-related health risks, with the least access to care or resources to adapt.
The global health sector receives less than 1% of all climate adaptation funding. This is a failure of global priorities. The estimated funding gap for health-related climate adaptation ranges from $8 billion to $17 billion, according to the UN Environment Programme. Without closing this gap, healthcare systems everywhere will struggle to meet rising demands, especially in vulnerable communities where climate change is accelerating inequality and suffering.
It is time to transform healthcare systems to be climate resilient. This means:
- Training healthcare professionals to understand and manage the growing connections between the environment and illness.
- Helping healthcare professionals to educate their patients on these topics so that patients and families can protect themselves.
- Investing in climate-smart healthcare infrastructure—clinics that can withstand extreme heat, storms, and flooding.
- Ensuring that climate adaptation funds directly support healthcare access, equity, and preparedness.
- Expanding public health capacity to respond to disease outbreaks and disasters driven by the changing climate.
My Green Doctor is a proven environmental sustainability practice management program that helps clinics build climate resilience from the ground up. Our team works closely with practice managers and clinicians to make adding environmental sustainability easy and rewarding. Most practices save money as they help create healthier workplaces and communities. Please consider introducing Executive Director, Dr. Todd Sack, to the administrator responsible for clinics and practices at your organization with an email such as, “I am pleased to introduce you to Dr. Todd Sack ([email protected]) who is the Executive Director of My Green Doctor. My Green Doctor saves money for clinics and practices by helping them accelerate environmental sustainability. He would be grateful for fifteen minutes of your time by Zoom to explain how the program might help our clinics.”
We can stop treating health as an afterthought in the climate agenda. Together, we can save millions of lives, especially those most vulnerable.
Because sustainable healthcare isn’t optional—it’s essential.
Sources:
- World Health Organization. Climate Change and Health Fact Sheet (2023). Link ↩
- European Investment Bank. Estimating the Impact of Climate Change on European Healthcare (2025). Link ↩
- NRDC/Medical Society Consortium. The Costs of Inaction on Climate and Health in the U.S. (2022). ↩
- International Labour Organization. Working on a Warmer Planet (2019). Link ↩
- African Development Bank. Climate Change Impacts on Health in Africa (2023). ↩
- Alcayna et al. How much climate adaptation finance targets the health sector? PLOS Global Public Health, 3(6), 2023. DOI ↩
- United Nations Environment Programme. Adaptation Gap Report (2023). Link ↩
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| My Green Doctor Begins Pilot with Weill Cornell Medicine
We’re pleased to share that Weill Cornell Medicine, one of the nation’s most respected academic medical institutions, has begun using My Green Doctor’s environmental sustainability practice management program—an important step toward building a more sustainable healthcare future.
With a network of over 1,300 physicians and 40+ patient care locations across New York City, Weill Cornell’s influence in healthcare delivery and education is far-reaching. They are now using My Green Doctor pilot at one large practice within the system, reflecting a growing interest in integrating climate-smart operations into everyday clinical care.
While this is an early-stage initiative for Weill Cornell, the My Green Doctor program itself is not new. Since its launch in 2010, MGD has been helping healthcare clinics, offices, and systems around the world make practical, measurable progress toward environmental sustainability—without compromising patient care, staff efficiency, or clinic finances.
MGD by the Numbers:
- 30 health professional societies offer MGD as a free membership benefit.
- 8,500 new users joined in 2023.
- 1.3 million physicians are represented through the World Medical Association, a participating organization.
- 19 countries have national medical associations that provide MGD resources.
By joining this global community of forward-thinking clinics, Weill Cornell is signaling its awareness that climate change is no longer a distant concern. It is already impacting public health, health equity, and healthcare delivery systems. Hospitals and medical practices are both vulnerable to climate risks and uniquely positioned to lead the solutions.
Why It Matters
The My Green Doctor program is built on a structured, step-by-step framework that helps busy medical teams integrate sustainability into practice operations. The benefits are wide-ranging:
Direct Benefits:
- Improved staff engagement and morale around a shared purpose.
- Cost savings through waste reduction, energy efficiency, and greener procurement.
- Enhanced patient trust and education by modeling environmental responsibility in care settings.
Indirect Benefits:
- Contributions to climate resilience in communities disproportionately affected by environmental health risks.
- Support for broader institutional goals in equity, population health, and public health leadership.
A Thoughtful Start, with an Eye on the Future
This pilot is modest in scale—but meaningful. It lays the groundwork for potential future expansion within Weill Cornell and serves as a valuable case study for other large institutions considering similar efforts. At My Green Doctor, we are excited to support Weill Cornell’s journey and to learn alongside their team. Our mission has always been to make climate-smart healthcare not only possible—but practical—for every kind of medical practice, no matter the size or starting point. |
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| MIT Sloan’s Climate Interactive Tool Sheds Light on the Growing Health Crisis of Climate Change
Climate change is often framed in terms of rising sea levels, melting ice caps, and extreme weather events. But a far more intimate, and often underreported, consequence lies in its toll on human health. MGD Marketing Consultant Judy Holm is a Certified Ambassador for Climate Interactive. She spotlights how our changing climate is reshaping global health and how online tools like En-ROADS from the MIT Sloan School of Management can help us prepare and respond.
The Hidden Costs of a Warming Planet
En-ROADS is a free online climate simulator. Three newly introduced features demonstrate visually some of the most severe health-related outcomes of climate inaction:
- Disease Exposure Risk
As global temperatures rise, so does the reach of disease-carrying vectors like mosquitoes. Regions once too cool to support malaria or dengue fever are becoming breeding grounds for these deadly diseases. This increased disease burden hits hardest in areas with limited healthcare infrastructure, compounding the human and economic toll.
- Decline in the Nutritional Content of Crops
Elevated atmospheric CO₂ levels may boost plant growth, but they also diminish the nutritional content of essential food sources. Staple crops such as rice and wheat are experiencing declines in protein, zinc, and iron — nutrients crucial for child development, immune health, and cognitive function. In already vulnerable populations, this silent nutritional erosion could trigger widespread health crises, including anemia, stunted growth, and increased susceptibility to infection.
- Rising Global Drought Risk
Droughts are becoming more frequent and intense, threatening water supplies and food security. These conditions not only increase the risk of malnutrition and dehydration but also exacerbate mental health issues and force displacement, triggering a cascade of socio-economic and health challenges.
Empowering Change Through Data-Driven Dialogue
En-ROADS stands out as a potent tool for effective climate change mitigation. Created by Climate Interactive and MIT Sloan School of Management, it allows students, policymakers, business leaders, educators, and concerned citizens to simulate the outcomes of different climate policies in real time. The visual, data-rich experience fosters deeper understandings and discussions.
These new health-focused layers in En-ROADS make it easier than ever to demonstrate why climate mitigation is a present-day necessity. Reducing emissions, investing in renewable energy, protecting forests, and improving agricultural practices all have measurable benefits, not only for the planet but for human health.
The Intersection of Health, Climate, and Communication
Judy Holm states, “As a Certified Climate Interactive Ambassador, I use En-ROADS in workshops and consultations to help organizations visualize the ripple effects of their decisions. As a marketing consultant for MGD, I also bring this lens to our content and campaigns — ensuring that our messaging reflects both the environmental and health dimensions of sustainability.”
Climate change affects us all, but it does not affect us equally. Vulnerable populations — children, the elderly, and low-income communities — are bearing the brunt of its health consequences. With tools like En-ROADS, we have a clearer picture of the stakes — and a roadmap for change. |
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| What do think of the Green Practice News?
Please tell us your thoughts about Green Practice News; we would love to hear from you! Please email us at [email protected] . |
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| Tell Us What You Need to Go Green: A Survey from Blue Shield of California
Blue Shield of California is a health insurance company and a My Green Doctor sponsor. A new survey from BS-CA is asking medical practices what they need to go green. This eight-minute surveys is anonymous. Your insights will help Blue Shield and My Green Doctor to better understand how to support and empower clinicians and health systems to address climate-related challenges.
If enough surveys are completed, Green Practice News will share the survey highlights later this year. Thank you. |
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