The impacts of climate change, from extreme weather events that decimate the world’s poorest nations to polluted air and water that disproportionately affect our country’s poorest neighborhoods, damage our planet and stress our social and economic systems. What are the moral responsibilities of developing nations in providing for and protecting the poorest and most vulnerable among us who are most impacted by these unfolding, worldwide devastations?

Join us to hear from leading experts about:

• Why climate change is disproportionally impacting the health and wellness of the poor

• What we can do as individuals to help those most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change

• Steps the US can and should take to become a worldwide climate leader

Speakers:

• Gina McCarthy, former U.S. EPA Administrator, Director of C-CHANGE (Center for Climate, Health and the Global Environment) at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, has been a leading advocate for common sense strategies to protect public health and the environment for more than 30 years. Her tenure as EPA Administrator heralded a paradigm shift in national environmental policy, expressly linking it with global public health. She led EPA initiatives that cut air pollution, protected water resources, reduced greenhouse gases, and strengthened chemical safety to better protect more Americans, especially the most vulnerable, from negative health impacts.

• Aaron Bernstein MD, MPH Co-Director of C-CHANGE (Center for Climate, Health and the Global Environment) at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health; Pediatric Hospitalist, Boston Children's Hospital, focuses on the health impacts of the climate crisis on children’s health and advancing solutions to address its causes to improve the health and wellbeing of children around the world. In 2019, Dr. Bernstein testified before Congress on the child health impacts of climate change, drawing from his personal experience as a pediatrician having to treat children with breathing difficulties, vector-borne diseases, and trauma from natural disasters.

• Renee N. Salas, MD, MPH, MS, Clinical Instructor of Emergency Medicine at Harvard Medical School and an emergency medicine physician at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), is a 2018 Burke Fellow is addressing the current research gaps in climate change and healthy. She served as the lead for the 2018 Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change U.S. Brief and is a nationally recognized leader on this subject.