Climate Action Is the 2025 Health Resolution We All Need | Opinion

It's official—2024 was the hottest year on record. Three weeks into 2025, and this is not the only climate health headline of the new year. Devastating wildfires have claimed lives and destroyed homes in California. The horrific fires are exacerbated not only by aggressive winds, but by hotter and drier conditions—exactly what the last decade has brought. Climate change is clearly not a summer problem; it is a year-round health concern.

From a doctor's perspective, the concerns are mounting. Wildfire smoke increases breathing complications in children and the number of heat related deaths has been on the rise across the country, with an uptick since 2016. Really, no part of the body is spared from a warming planet as we witness the spread of infectious diseases, worsening of pollen allergies, and strain on mental health.

Dry January, gym memberships, and preventative health appointments are all important for improving health in the new year, but so is treating what editors of leading medical journals call the "greatest threat to global public health"—climate change.

As a physician, my job is to take care of my patients. And in prescribing climate action, that is exactly what I aim to do. We often think of improving health as individual actions—sleep more, eat healthy, exercise. But how can we all become healthier? The answer is by making the environment we live in healthier.

Climate activist Bill McKibben has recommended a think local approach to climate action. There is a lot of merit to this advice when thinking about our health. Consider wildfires—15 of the 20 largest wildfires in California occurred over the last 10 years. If we were to provide all health care professionals—doctors, nurses, and first responders—with the resources and time to educate their patients and at-risk communities on safety measures related to worsening wildfires, like how to protect children from wildfire smoke and what to do to prepare for wildfire season, we could better protect individuals during these deadly events.

City officials and community leaders need to also be involved; they are instrumental to protecting health by planning safety measures for low-income communities that are at highest risk. As summer heat extremes worsen, we need to keep shelters open and safe, maintain cooling centers, and distribute information on how to keep children safe when playing outdoors. In addition, anticipatory planning of public health needs is key as global warming intensifies weather events like wildfires and hurricanes, which threaten access to hospitals and strain limited resources.

We must also go beyond adaptive measures and aim for source control—the emissions that are warming the planet. This is just good medicine. When someone has an infection in their bloodstream, we treat them with antibiotics and we remove the source of the infection (an infected catheter).

The health sector in the United States is responsible for about 8.5 percent of the United States' carbon footprint. Incorporating energy efficient and less wasteful practices in clinics and hospitals across the country holds tremendous promise in lowering this outsized carbon footprint. Data shows that patient outcomes in the United States are comparable to other countries whose health care systems have a much lower carbon footprint per patient, suggesting that we can achieve the same high level of patient care with much lower levels of polluting emissions. And in doing so, make a positive impact on a growing public health problem.

To be sure, to truly scale our efforts, we need not only a bottom-up approach, but also a top-down approach with systemic change in health care and beyond—transportation, energy, agriculture, et cetera. But until that happens, the best treatment we can give ourselves is to engage in climate action.

Health care emissions are relevant for me and others who work in the field of medicine. Localized actions to address climate change look different for every person. Each of us has a voice, a sphere of influence, a vote, and actionable steps—each of us can play a part in the treatment plan.

Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, a marine biologist and climate motivator extraordinaire, best summarizes what we need to do now: "Take a deep breath, find your role, roll up your sleeves, get tenacious." Only by doing so can we protect our health on a planet that is slowly heating up.

Neelu Tummala is an ENT physician with an expertise in the health impacts of climate change. She is on the executive committee of the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.