Alexander Ding, MD, MBA, a radiologist, an incoming American Medical Association (AMA) Board of Trustees member, an AMA delegate with the California Medical Association, and chair of the AMA Council on Science and Public Health, discusses a new AMA policy calling climate change a healthcare crisis and outlines the need for action to mitigate its impact on public health. It was one of the bigger policy announcements from the 2022 AMA House of Delegates meeting.
Ding is also a clinical assistant professor at the University of Louisville and is physician executive-in-residence in the Office of the Chief Medical Officer at Humana.
"There was a lot of discussion on this policy in the reference committee to ensure this was a strong policy statement from the AMA. When it came before the House of Delegates, it was passed unanimously," Ding explained.
Ding said the AMA originally issued a statement in 2008 that outlined potential health threats of global temperature rise. He said the AMA wanted to revisit the issue now that climate change is coming to the forefront of concerns in government policy and the media. The committee created this new resolution based on the latest scientific data from over the past decade.
The goal of this policy within healthcare is to acknowledge that medicine needs to find ways to decarbonize to help global efforts because it makes up a sizable sector of the economy and is a large consumer of both fossil fuel energy and petroleum-derived plastics used in medical devices and most disposable medical products.
"We made the statement that we consider climate change to be a global public health emergency, and that this should be a priority," Ding said. "For me personally, I consider this an existential threat that needs to be addressed, and this policy raises the bar about the urgency of climate change."
Read more about the policy in the article AMA declares climate change a public health crisis.
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Dave Fornell has covered healthcare for more than 17 years, with a focus in cardiology and radiology. Fornell is a 5-time winner of a Jesse H. Neal Award, the most prestigious editorial honors in the field of specialized journalism. The wins included best technical content, best use of social media and best COVID-19 coverage. Fornell was also a three-time Neal finalist for best range of work by a single author. He produces more than 100 editorial videos each year, most of them interviews with key opinion leaders in medicine. He also writes technical articles, covers key trends, conducts video hospital site visits, and is very involved with social media. E-mail: dfornell@innovatehealthcare.com