New Hampshire - March 2022

Page 18 • New Hampshire Nursing News March, April, May 2022
Policy Proposal continued from page 17
As identified in ANA’s foundational documents, advocacy
directed towards the climate crisis, with its multiple direct
and indirect impacts on health, is a professional imperative
and should be an essential component of ANA’s issues of
concern platform.
In recognition of the serious health impacts and health
inequities related to climate change, the Department of
Health and Human Services established the Office of
Climate Change and Health Equity (OCCHE), and the
National Academy of Medicine (NAM) launched the Action
Collaborative on Decarbonizing the U.S. Health Sector in
2021. Now is the time for strong nurse leadership on this
issue and work with our healthcare colleagues on climate
solutions.
Additional Considerations:
• Current and future younger nurses are more aware of
environmental impacts on human health.
• Nursing practice is going to be defined by health
impacts of climate change which is being felt today
with only one degree global temperature increase,
and is projected to increase significantly higher within
their lifetime.
• Our responsibility is to prepare the next generation
of nurses for these challenges and demonstrate
collaborative practice with other healthcare
professionals
• We need to be respectful of the upcoming nurses’
fund of knowledge on these issues.
• Nurses are the largest part of healthcare delivery
system
• Nurses have the ability to impact change at the micro
level
• Collaboration is part of the nursing curriculum -
understand the power
• Connecting the dots between patient care and
environmental impacts
• Empower nurses to advocate and educate - through
personal education, give them confidence to take
leadership roles and encourage them to go beyond
the hospital/health care system into their local
communities
• Help to develop the toolkit that has resources from
collaborative climate/health care organizations
• Healthy Nurse/Healthy Nation similar to Nurses
Climate Challenge: Change self/change community.
• Nurses know what they know and what they don’t
know and are willing to ask for help and they know
where to get more credible information.
4. Identify the underlying issue(s) to be addressed during
the Dialogue Forum.
Climate change is a global problem that starts with
individual actions but is ultimately impacted by the actions
of individuals, corporations, and countries around the
world. It’s multifactorial and appears to be a task beyond
any individual’s ability to address. Because the need to start
somewhere is so critical, nurses should start at the junction
they know and understand: the impacts on human and
population health. So the first question we can ask is: what
role can and should nurses play in increasing the awareness
of the impacts of climate change on health? Exploring this
question is support by Standard 18 of the Nursing Scope
and Standards of Practice, 4th Edition. This Standard calls
on registered nurses to advance environmental safety and
health through their practice.
Similarly, Standard 18 also calls on registered nurses to
advance environmental concerns through advocacy and to
promote sustainable global environmental health policies,
supporting an exploration of the question: what are the best
ways in which nurses can advocate for climate actions to
reduce the impact of climate on human and population
health?
Finally, the Code of Ethics for Nurses holds that nurses have
a duty to self-care. Many climate healthy solutions lead to
improved human health. Nurses will be better informed as
to steps they can take that will improve their health while
improving the health of the planet.
5. Recommended actions.
The participants in the Dialogue Forum should determine
the most appropriate actions. The team drafting this proposal
identified several suggestions that might be considered.
• Urge ANA to update/revise 2008 House of Delegates
Statement on Global Climate Change and Human
Health.
• Develop and deploy a survey to determine nurse
knowledge of the links between health and climate
change, and their understanding of possible climate
actions that can help to mitigate climate change.
• Urge ANA to share information/educational
resources/tool kits to educate nurses on the impact
of climate change on human health and provide
guidance for nurses to educate the public on these
impacts. Many of these resources are already
available and can be provided to registered nurses
through partnerships/affiliations with organizations
such as Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments.
• Include the climate crisis and its consequential impact
on human and population health as an essential
component of ANA’s issues of concern platform.
• Urge/continue to urge American Association of
Colleges of Nursing (AACN) and Health Resources
and Services Administration (HRSA) to develop
curricula and professional development opportunities
to increase the knowledge and skills of the healthcare
workforce to effectively address health impacts
of climate change.
• Develop Healthy Nurses Healthy Nation challenges
that also recognized that many climate healthy
solutions lead to improved human health, such as
reducing the amount of meat in your diet, walking/
biking to work when possible to reduce use of fuel
powered vehicles, etc.
• Urge nurses through ANA’s Nurse Innovation
program to consider developing products/
technologies that are climate friendly.
• ANA could consider hosting a Climate Summit in
2023. The Climate Summit would be the opportunity
to create an inter-professional arena where health
and climate experts from all disciplines can discuss
solutions from a variety of points of view and find
common ground for meaningful action and reduce
redundancy of actions and silo thinking. Nurses
are uniquely trusted messengers, and ANA’s robust
grassroots membership is ideal for implementation.
By consolidating already established resources under
the ANA Enterprise (ANA, ANCC, ANF) and easily