Environmental changes impact our health.
Health professionals need to be prepared to respond.
A changing planet
Climate change, pollution, biodiversity loss, and other environmental changes are creating new disease patterns, threats to mental health, malnutrition, and safety risks. The magnitude of these challenges is unprecedented, with increasingly severe and frequent impacts felt across the world – most acutely in lower-income settings.
The future of medicine
What health professionals are seeing in hospitals and clinics is shifting – requiring new approaches to diagnosis, treatment, and advocacy. Health professionals must understand how their patients are affected by challenges like wildfires, extreme weather, nutritional deficiencies, disaster-related trauma, pollution, and ecological changes.
Extreme Heat
An 83-year-old woman with congestive heart failure, atrial fibrillation, and chronic kidney disease braces for an impending heat emergency.
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Emerging Zoonoses
A 28-year-old man presents to the ER in Kerala, India with confusion, fever, and vomiting. His relatives, some of whom catch wild animals and collect fruit, are also in the ER and have similar symptoms.
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Displacement & Refugee Health
A 28-year-old woman recently arrived in the U.S. from Somalia presents to your primary care clinic in Seattle to establish care.
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Air Pollution
A 55-year-old woman in rural Rwanda presents with progressively worsening dyspnea on exertion and lower extremity and abdominal swelling. She cooks daily using a wood-fired stove in her dirt home.
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Climate Distress & Ecoanxiety
You are seeing a 28-year-old patient in the Western U.S. who vaguely complains about “not feeling well” and generally worrying about her health. As you take a history, you find that she has significant concerns about climate change and the state of the environment.
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Toxic Exposures
In a rural area of West Africa, a three-year-old child is admitted to the local hospital with abdominal pain and decreased responsiveness after a witnessed seizure.
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Pandemic Preparedness
A 44-year-old woman presents to your primary care clinic with severe headache, fever, chills, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and a diffuse rash. She just traveled back from Uganda, where she went on a safari.
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Food Security
A 50-year-old male living in a small town in rural Alaska presents for diabetes follow up. This patient has a history of hypertension and diet-controlled diabetes.
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Vectorborne Diseases & Climate Change
A female in her thirties presents to an emergency room in Miami, Florida with fever, headache, and flank pain.
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Water-Related Disasters
A 27-year-old male presents with severe pain in his right leg 7 days after a monsoon resulted in a severe flash flood in his community in the Philippines.
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Pets & Other Animal Sentinels
A 60-year-old woman is admitted to the hospital in the Northeastern U.S. with fever, headache, nausea, vomiting, fatigue, and altered mental status. She reports that her dog died the week before – that also had fever and neurological problems.
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