Health Declares - Campaign Round Up
'Health Declares' campaigned to our local and national healthcare bodies to do three things: declare a climate emergency; divest from fossil fuels and to take action. The website is now shutting down, but the resources created are free to use and can still be accessible via the CSH resource library. These include template letters to trusts and colleges, guides to declaring and creating climate action plans, and communication ideas.
Here is a brief summary of what HD was and what it achieved, written by Dr Hannah Orrell, GP and former member:
Health Declares (full name Health Declares Climate and Ecological Emergency) was an influential group in the Climate-Health sphere founded in 2019. We were a grass-roots collective, made up of varied health professionals including doctors, nurses, physiotherapists and students from across the UK. We formed from a shared recognition that the climate and ecological crises are health emergencies, and over an intense period of just a few years we successfully lobbied our various representative institutions and workplaces to declare emergencies and take action. Using this approach of 'insider pressure' which we were a part of, over 20 local and national organisations declared, including the RCGP (Royal College of General Practitioners), RCP (Royal College of Physicians) and RPS (Royal Pharmaceutical Society), and we gathered over 500 individual declarations through our website. We were a visible (and vocal!) presence at a lot of protests, and the knock-on effects of what we achieved can be seen in many other of the climate-health organisations which have sprung up since then. For example, in 2020 our program of talks coincided with the launch of Greener NHS. It also allowed the formation of groups like Pharmacy Declares which have been instrumental in achieving a Greener Pharmacy toolkit with the RPS. Congratulations to all involved over the years, and we hope that this is something you can be proud of and can take forward wherever you are living and working now.
Resources (click to access):
- Guide to Declaring a Climate Emergency in the Health Sector: This is a document designed to help your Hospital Trust or Royal College make a meaningful declaration. It has been created for us by Sustainability Managers from different trusts across the UK and provides a breakdown of actions trusts can take to reduce their contribution to the climate crisis.
- Template letter to send to your trust: Written by healthcare professionals and used across the UK.
- How to get your Royal College or Faculty to Declare: A series of case studies written by groups of healthcare professionals who have successfully lobbied their representing bodies to declare.
- Post-Declaration Communication: Compiled from our experiences of media techniques used in declaring.
Climate Crisis = Health Crisis Sticker:
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