Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health

To raise awareness about the impact that climate change has on patient health, the AAFP partnered with 20 other medical organizations and associations (representing more than 500,000 health care professionals) to form the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health. The consortium’s mission is “to organize, empower and amplify the voice of America’s doctors to convey how climate change is harming our health and how climate solutions will improve it.”

The consortium’s 2017 report, Medical Alert! Climate Change is Harming our Health, identified the following five message all Americans should know:

1. There is a scientific consensus about human-caused climate change.
2. In communities across the nation, climate change is harming our health now.
3. The health of any American can be harmed by climate change, but some of us face greater risk than others.
4. Unless we take concerted action, these harms to our health are going to get much worse.
5. The most important action we can take to protect our health is to reduce heat-trapping pollution by reducing energy waste and accelerating the inevitable transition to clean renewable energy.