Climate Change and Healthcare Leadership

It’s an often cited statistic that if healthcare was a country, it would be the fifth largest carbon emitter. At The BMJ we want to change that, and move healthcare towards a more sustainable future. 

In this week’s episode, we’ll hear about our annual climate edition from two of The BMJ’s editors, Sophie Cook and Juliet Dobson. 

We’ll be diving into Cli-Fi and asking how climate fiction can galvanise our collective response to climate change. Our panel includes Howard Frumkin, professor emeritus at University of Washington. Lakshmi Krishnan, internist and Director of Medical Humanities at Georgetown university, and Sarah Grossman, journalist and author of Fire So Wild.

And Finally, Tereza Kasaeva, director of the WHO’s Global Tuberculosis Programme, explains how migration and food insecurity, exacerbated by climate change, are affecting TB - and why, despite effective treatment, there are still over a million deaths from the disease annually. 

Our panel's cli-fi book recommendations

• A Fire So Wild - Sarah Grossman
• The Last Man - Mary W. Shelly
• The Broken Earth  - NK Jemisin
• Oryx and Crake - Margaret Attwood
• The Ministry for the Future - Kim Stanley Robinson
• Olga Dies Dreaming - Xóchitl González
• Land of Milk and Honey - C Pam Zhang
• Day of the Triffids - John Wyndham

Links

• The BMJ’s annual climate issue
• Cli-Fi—helping us manage a crisis
• Writing towards a healthier future amid climate disaster
• WISH report - Tuberculosis

Lakshmi’s references

• Fundamental Role of Arts and Humanities in Medical Education 
• Capable of being in uncertainties’: applied medical humanities in undergraduate medical education
• The introduction of medical humanities in the undergraduate curriculum of Greek medical schools: challenge and necessity
• The medical humanities at United States medical schools