- Frontline Clinics and Extreme Weather Events
- Our Long History with the AMA
- Recommended Reading- Handbook of Climate Psychiatry and Psychotherapy: A Manual for Clinicians.
Frontline Clinics, Extreme Weather, and the Urgent Need for Preparedness
Primary care clinics—particularly those serving low-income and socially disadvantaged populations—are on the frontlines of both health and climate change.
A recent national survey of 430 clinic staff across 43 U.S. states reveals how climate-related extreme events are already disrupting operations and threatening patient health. The findings, published in BMC Primary Care and conducted by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment (C-CHANGE) in partnership with Americares, underscore the urgent need for resilience planning. The research was supported in part by a grant from Biogen.
Key Findings from the Survey
The majority (82%) of respondents agreed that human activities are driving climate change. Yet only one in five reported strong knowledge about how climate change directly affects health. This knowledge gap matters, since 84% of providers and case workers acknowledged that climate change impacts patient health, but only 36% discussed these risks with patients—largely due to limited time and competing priorities.
Operational disruptions are widespread:
- 52% reported power failures
- 28% experienced hurricanes
- 23% faced flooding
These disruptions led to clinic closures, staff shortages, spoiled vaccines, and loss of medications. As one respondent summarized, “Extreme weather doesn’t just stress patients—it shuts down the very places they turn to for help.”
What Clinics Say They Need
When asked about their greatest needs during extreme weather, staff overwhelmingly identified emergency power as the most critical requirement, followed by real-time information, access to emergency services, and financial assistance.
Motivation and Barriers
The good news: more than half of respondents expressed strong motivation to use climate resilience resources such as checklists, planning guidance, and training modules. Providers were also motivated to help patients prepare for extreme events, though they cited barriers such as time constraints, more pressing medical topics, and lack of climate-health knowledge.
Research Authored by: Tess Wiskel, Thomas T. Miles, Mariel Fonteyn, Kristin Stevens, Chelsea Heberlein, Nathaniel Matthews-Trigg, Caleb Dresser, and Aaron Bernstein
Expanding the Toolkit for Resilience
In direct response to these findings, Harvard Chan C-CHANGE and Americares developed the Climate Resilience for Frontline Clinics Toolkit in 2022. This free online resource—available in English and Spanish—equips patients, providers, and administrators with practical tools for extreme heat, wildfires and smoke, hurricanes, and flooding. Clinics across the country have piloted the toolkit, and an expanded version was released in 2024. To date, the toolkit has been downloaded more than 20,000 times, demonstrating both its reach and urgent relevance.
Why This Matters for Practice Management
For healthcare professionals, the implications are clear. Climate change is not a distant problem—it is a present and growing challenge that disrupts patient care and widens health inequities. Integrating resilience into practice management systems is no longer optional.
That’s where My Green Doctor (MGD) can help. MGD offers free, evidence-based resources tailored to clinics, including sustainability and resilience checklists, patient education materials, and staff training guides. For practices seeking deeper support, our customized consulting services provide step-by-step strategies to safeguard both operations and patients during climate-driven disruptions. And, learn how to create significant cost savings by following our practice management program.
Moving Forward
As the survey authors conclude: frontline clinics are essential to community resilience. By equipping clinics with the right tools, training, and planning resources, we can ensure continuity of care for the patients who need it most—especially in times of crisis.
✅ Call to Action
Healthcare professionals, practice managers, and clinic administrators can start building resilience today:
- Visit MyGreenDoctor.org to access free resources and guides.
- Enroll your clinic in our Entire Practice Green Membership to systematically improve sustainability and preparedness.
- Contact us for customized consulting support to accelerate your clinic’s resilience journey- [email protected].
Together, we can safeguard patient health while building clinics that are greener, healthier, and more resilient.
Our Long History with the AMAThe AMA and the My Green Doctor Foundation have a long history together, supporting sustainability in healthcare practices.
Here are some excerpts and resources shared from the AMA website:
An AMA guide, “Lower costs by going green!” (PDF) provides simple, quickly achievable steps in maintaining an environmentally sustainable medical practice. It includes links to other reputable sites with even more detailed information.
The effects of climate change “have direct implications for health care,” says the AMA’s guide, citing a study regarding the direct impact on “changing patterns of disease and mortality.”
While taking part in the long-term work of healing the environment, physicians can experience an immediate and substantial drop in the cost of running a practice.
“Most practices can save $2,000 per physician, per year or more” by adopting wise environmental sustainability standards, says gastroenterologist Todd L. Sack, MD, My Green Doctor Foundation Founder and AMA member who is a long-time environmental advocate within organized medicine and in his home state of Florida.
The site’s list of 10 reasons to go green—also included in the AMA’s guide—says that payoffs come in more ways than just dollars and cents.
According to the guide, an eco-friendlier practice:
- Is a wiser and more responsible uses of resources.
- Saves money.
- Creates a healthier work environment.
- Facilitates team building.
- Generates ideas from every member of your office.
- Improves employee retention.
- Enhances public relations.
- Contributes to a decrease in pollution.
- Builds a healthier community.
- Makes environmental sustainability part of your life.
4 simple ways to go green
What the team should focus on first are easy changes that can have a big impact. The AMA guide lists these four.
1. Establish a “turn off” policy- Make it a practice-wide rule to completely turn off computers, lights, printers, and fax and copy machines at the end of each day.
2. Reset your thermostats- During working hours, there are only two temperature settings to remember: 68 degrees in winter and 74 degrees in the summer. When the office is closed for the night, raise or lower those temperatures, depending on the season. Programmable thermostats will do the work for you.
3. Upgrade your light bulbs- Light-emitting diode and compact fluorescent lamp lighting last up to 25 times longer than incandescent bulbs, while using 75% less energy.
4. Reduce and recycle waste- Buy in bulk, buy recycled—including the packaging—and when done with it, recycle it again. Make sure recycling bins are conveniently placed throughout the office. There are many ways to cut use of paper, including double-sided printing and the electronic health record. Switch to a digital fax system that receives faxes by email instead of paper.
For the long run, physician practices will want to embrace a culture of environmental sustainability, adding new policies and procedures. That includes setting goals, measuring progress and making adjustments along the way. At this stage, financial resources can be committed to initiatives that go beyond initial, low-cost activities.
The guide gives two examples. Solar thermal systems that heat water require investment but offer long-lasting savings. “Green power”—electricity generated from renewable resources—is widely available. It can cost more, but practices may choose that option as part of their commitment to environmental sustainability.
Among many other advantages, telehealth is an environmentally efficient solution, lowering the carbon footprint of both the practice and its patients. Check out the AMA STEPS Forward™ toolkit on adopting telemedicine.
Want more help going green? My Green Doctor is here to support you!
Contact us at [email protected] to set up a FREE consultation on making your clinic more sustainable.
Visit www.MyGreenDoctor.org to get started today!
Let’s use our trusted voices to make a healthier planet and healthier patients!
Recommended Reading
Handbook of Climate Psychiatry and Psychotherapy: A Manual for Clinicians.
This is the interview in Psychology Today from June 2, 2025 ( Reviewed by Jessica Schrader), beteen Dr. Grant Hilary Brenner (GHB) and Dr. Beth Haase (EH)
· GHB: What topics are part of climate psychotherapy and psychiatry?
· EH: You can think of climate psychiatry and psychology as all the factors associated with mental health and well-being that are influenced by climate change. We often break these down into a few large categories. This includes neurobiological effects, like the changes in brain function with high temperature or new or increased neuroinfectious diseases, psychological effects, like grief for losses in the natural world, and ways that climate change is a “threat multiplier” for other unequal social conditions that negatively affect health such as air pollution and urban heat island effects. I also think it is critical to include cognitive science about how people change behaviors and why autocratic and reactionary thinking increases with climate change in order to effect the best response.
· GHB: How do you think about the environment and nature? What is important about the environment and nature for our mental health?
· EH: Nature for me is everything—awe, solace, inspiration, nurturance. I am not alone, though. Many people will tell you their most powerful experiences of stillness, beauty, and wonder occurred in nature. Scientific studies show that time in nature is really good for our immune system, diabetes, hypertension, pulmonary disease, attention and emotional health, among many other benefits. Time in nature decreases loneliness and rumination and improves joy, self esteem, and social connectedness. Interactions with animals help people with anxiety disorders, autism, and health problems. I have a lot of patients who have reduced or eliminated medications after getting an animal.
· GHB: What impacts does climate change have on well-being?
· EH: Climate change impacts all of the lifestyle pillars of good mental health. Haze and heat elicit negative emotions. Good quality food is harder to come by with drought and flooding. Heat, disasters, and changes like sea level rise will increase all kinds of social stress: forced migration, increased civic violence, more exposure to toxins, poor sleep, and so on. Some argue that there will be gains from tourism, outdoor activity, and less cold-related illness from more warm weather, but studies show that these gains are more than offset by negative health and economic effects.
· GHB: How can psychotherapy help folks affected by climate change?
· EH: Most people working in this area feel that group therapy approaches are most empowering for people who are distressed about climate change. It takes a village to tackle these problems. Climate cafes are an easily organized way of gathering people together for a structured conversation about the climate concerns people have and the hurdles they face in themselves and their communities to get to a sustainable way of living. For people who want to go deeper, I recommend the Work that Reconnects and Deep Adaptation Forum, which offer processes for deep value-based reflection, your relationship with the more-than-human world, and what you can connect to and let go of so that your lifestyle comes into better alignment with your climate response. Fossil fuels have given us such an amazing power to live as we wish. But it can feel good to disconnect from constant marketing pulls to do, have, and be more, and we have all the tools to continue our lifestyle through clean energy sources.
· In terms of individual therapy, anyone can benefit from a deeper dive into their own relationship with nature and the existential planetary emergency we are in. In the book, I offer a comprehensive assessment therapists and individuals can do to examine all of the aspects of personal psychology that are relevant to climate change. I also give therapy techniques for experimenting with new kinds of hope, future imagining, and shaking off the disavowal and dialectic extremes that can lead to climate despair.
· It’s also important to remember, though, that almost everyone is concerned about climate change—70-plus percent of the United States population—and so really any conversation about environmental changes and reducing fossil fuel use is going to be helpful. For a lot of people, change feels overwhelming, and just talking with your neighbor can help them and you get over the hurdle, rather than everyone needing formal psychotherapy. I find a 50 percent rule helps my anxiety. You only need to make a 30 to 50 percent change: fly about half as often, or connect up your work and vacation trips. Throw away half as much food and eat half as much meat. Have two children instead of four—that kind of thing.
· GHB: What are some key resources for people who want to learn more about how they can make a difference?
· EH: Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project offers a wonderful free training so anyone can get knowledgeable and figure out how they can use their own unique abilities and interests to make a difference. I also like Bioneers, and for health care professionals, Climate Psychiatry Alliance, Climate Psychology Alliance, and the Medical Societies Consortium for Climate and Health.
Dr. Beth Haase is the author of Handbook for Climate Psychiatry and Psychology: A Manual for Clinicians, and editor of Climate Change and Youth Mental Health. She is a clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Nevada School of Medicine and medical director of psychiatry at Carson Tahoe Regional Medical Center.
