Here is the background of the four thought leaders who joined in conversation:

Bob Martineau, JD, a Senior Partner with FINN Partners, a global integrated marketing communications agency, who heads the Environment and Social Impact Group, and the former Commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Environment & Conservation, served as moderator.

James Hildreth, MD, President and Chief Executive Officer of Meharry Medical College in Nashville, the nation’s largest private, independent and historically black academic health sciences center. Dr. Hildreth is also a member of President Biden’s Health Equity Task Force. 

Rachel Hodgdon, CEO and President of the International WELL Building Institute. Rachel joined IWBI in November 2016, bringing her broad sustainability expertise and her track record as a leading global advocate for green schools, better buildings and social equity to IWBI’s work to advance human health through more vibrant communities and stronger organizations.

Gil Bashe, Chair Global Health and Purpose at FINN Partners.  He currently serves as editor-in-chief of MedikaLife, an online health magazine, and is a global correspondent for Health Tech World. He is also an ordained rabbi who is exploring how spiritual strength is a moral compass in addressing many of the world population’s most pressing physical needs.

Bob Martineau/FINN:  The discussion of many environmental and public health issues brings to the forefront environmental equity and social justice. So many studies show a direct correlation between public health in a community and the socio-economic impacts. Your work at Meharry with the social determinants of health speaks to that. It’s the lower income neighborhoods that sit next to factories and landfills and have contaminated water supplies. Low-income housing is the least energy efficient. How do we address these disparate impacts in our communities as we set public policy, both on the environmental health and the public health side of the coin?

Dr. Hildreth/Meharry:  First, I think we have to incentivize organizations, large and small, to start making different decisions about how they’re going to approach the business that they do and where they’re going to do it. Simple things like having walkways and parks and access to healthy foods would make such a huge difference in the lives of people. Even though I’m in healthcare, I understand that healthcare only accounts for about 10% of one’s overall health.

Health comes from being able to breathe clean air, eat healthy foods and have a certain level of educational attainment; that can only happen if organizations, even the governments that make the policies and laws that we live by, take a different approach to this. I point out that we spent $3.8 trillion on healthcare, but we’re not among the ten healthiest nations on the planet. If we just took 10% of that and use it to invest in children and their health and public health measures, we could actually change the dynamic for health in this country in a very dramatic way. But that’s going to take some will and dedication on the part of our leaders to get it done.

 Rachel Hodgdon/IWBI:  Health equity is a focus for IWBI as well.  Rabbi Bashe is working with us as a co-chair of our health equity advisory and the honor is mutual. We’re working on a new certification product or rating product that’s focused specifically on advancing diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility.

We start with the social determinants of health as the foundation of that work. Dr. Hildreth made mention to the social determinants without using the name. The social determinants of health, which is sort of a universally accepted truth within the public health community, must tell us is that where you sit and who you sit next to, your physical and social environment, have a greater impact on your health and wellbeing than your access to healthcare, your lifestyle and behaviors and any other factor combined.

That is such a powerful way of thinking about what we have to shift to shift public health outcomes. We need to think about how to do that in an equitable fashion. What we learned during COVID-19, very quickly, is that those who had the least suffered the most, but that is true for virtually every other public health issue that is out there, from diabetes and obesity to heart disease to cancer. We need to think about how we can reach those communities and reach them first.

One of the most important ways to do that is through policy. I would say those on the line who come from the media and communications world, the other most important vehicle that we have, are through those engines. In other words, in order to shift health outcomes, we have to shift perspectives and perceptions in the communities that we serve; that can happen in any variety of ways, but we need to go straight to the heart of low-income communities, both within this country and outside of it. Places where there are high concentrations of black and brown people- rural communities, urban communities. These are the places with the highest areas of need.

 Bob Martineau/FINN:  Rachel, Gil, Dr. Hildreth, those are great points. You are right- framing that message, and as Gil alluded to, right now, we’re in an era in a world where we distrust so many people.

We distrust our politicians and government officials.  We even distrust scientists standing at a podium explaining the facts and the cause and effect. We are a distrustful group.

So, how do we frame those messages? And as you alluded to, you need to find the right messenger, who they trust, whether it’s their minister or a pop star celebrity. But how do we frame those messages to really hit home and explain the behaviors that you suggest we need to change so that we can address these health equity impacts? Any thoughts or suggestions from the three of you on that? I’ll let you jump in, Dr. Hildreth. Any thoughts on how we communicate with people so they will listen and take action given the distrustful era that we live in today?

Dr. Hildreth/Meharry:   I think that it’s very clear that when the messenger comes from the same cultural background and community as the population they’re engaging, messages are much better received, and people actually listen. Part of our problem today is that people only tune into and engage those who reinforce the disbeliefs and the negatives they bring to it. We’ve got to find a way to change that.

In our work at Meharry, in my work on President Biden’s Task Force, we recognize that trusted messenger means that the messenger comes from the community that you’re trying to engage. I want  to make one other point here: to solve some of the problems that we’ve been talking about there’s an issue that has to be addressed that is seldom talked about seriously. That is that there’s bias and racism in so many areas of life in our country that if we don’t address it, inequities will persist. We are not going to be able to fix it unless we address that issue, which is at the heart of much of what we’ve been talking about here today. All lives are valued the same. We say that, but there a lot of ways our actions seem to belie that we actually believe it.

Rachel Hodgdon/IWBI:  I’ll pick up where Dr. Hildreth left off. We know that intellectual agreement alone is not inspiration to act. We cannot continue to fool ourselves into thinking that if people accept the notion that climate change is real, that they’ll change the choices that they make day to day. We have to start to pivot our messaging to make it more about what’s in it for each one of us. What’s in it for our family’s health and well-being? What’s in it for our communities and their ability to thrive? What’s in it for organizations and their ability to be successful and do good work? I think that a more health focused spin on climate change is one that is proving to be extremely successful. This is about the livelihood of our families and of ourselves.

When we focus on solutions that are good for the planet, what we’re really doing is focusing on solutions that are good for ourselves- healthier food, more sustainable agricultural practices, more access to nature and to greenery, more physical activity, less driving. All these things serve to benefit us in so many different ways. It’s a matter of translating the solutions to universal imperatives that call us all to action. I think at the heart of all of it is our desire to be well and our desire for our families to be well.

Gil Bashe/FINN:  I want to reinforce some things that Dr. Hildreth and Rachel shared, and I also want to acknowledge their organizations for a moment. Meharry Medical College with Dr. Hildreth’s leadership is really doing some very incredible things in terms of education. I want to start there. Children of all ages, even adult children, have great influence on their peer group and their families. When you start training a fifth grader about the importance of environmental health in a way that they appreciate it, and feel safe, they go home and talk about it. Children can be very influential advocates on their parents. So, education, whether it’s children, whether it’s a medical school,

I think Dr. Hildreth nailed that. Rachel alluded to something, but it’s much more important than her passing comment- the International Well Building Institute certification. It’s an organization that is dedicated to examining every element of environmental health, from racial disparities and inequities, to making sure that areas have walking paths, to certification and really means setting standards. That is critical. I also want to say that there’s something that was not said that I’m worried about and that is our “cancel culture.”

Dr. Hildreth alluded to that and talked about how half the people follow this group, and half the people follow that group. We all end up producing produce from the same soil. We breathe the same air, we have to drink the same water, regardless of political affiliation, regardless of race, regardless of religion, yet we are terribly divided. Rachel alluded to something through my work in spirituality, and that is the fact that we are all here, visitors, finite visitors on this planet, and we have to remember that we’re placed here in partnership, perhaps with a higher source to do good things for future generations.

We’re in an Amazon-like, environment, People want it delivered tomorrow. People want healthier environments tomorrow. Well, guess what? Make it better now, for tomorrow. I think that’s what we have to understand. We can do great things immediately- recycling, sparing water, voting, as Rachel said, for people who want to educate our children appropriately. These are all things we can do now.

Bob Martineau/FINN:  Thanks, Gil. To wrap this up, I want to ask you one final question and get your thoughts. I think the message here is so correct that we need to bring it together.  As Dr. Hildreth said at the beginning, the planet will be just fine without us, but we can’t survive on an unhealthy planet. We need to use our own human ingenuity to fix the problems we’ve created, and we can because we created the problems. We can fix them and save us and our planet. So, how do we take those messages recognizing the need to personalize it so people see what’s in it for them?

The consequences of these health issues are generally the same, but the impact is different based on socioeconomics and race and education. What are one or two things that the attendees, the listeners can take back and help really take action to start to move the needle in their communities and in their institutions? In other words, what is your call to action?

 Rachel Hodgdon/IWBI:   I’ll present a three-part strategy. The first is a personal commitment that we all can think about making and that is to really take a look at how much time we spend on planes year over year. Again, this goes back to that notion that we’re gaining more than we’re giving up. During COVID, we learned the value of staying in one place, many of us, at least, who had the luxury of comfortable situations. For those of us who are on the road a lot, many of us spent more time with our partners and with our families. We realized that we could get a lot done remotely as opposed to face to face. So, I’m not saying don’t travel, I love that as much as anyone else, but I’m saying travel more efficiently and more mindfully. And when possible, think about alternative forms of transportation other than planes.

The second is another simple action that I think will be extraordinarily helpful to you in your personal life, and in your work life, no matter what industry you’re a part of, and that is to pick up a copy of Paul Hawkins book, Regeneration. Regeneration launched just a couple of months ago. It’s already a New York Times bestseller, and it is the most beautiful and complete reframing of solutions for solving the climate crisis, taking climate out of the atmosphere and healing our relationships to one another as we heal our relationship to the planet.

Finally, more of a global action- find out if the companies that you work for and otherwise associate yourself with have a plan around ESG and have a target as it relates to reducing their emissions. Ask the questions, volunteer where appropriate to make contributions, but start to make these demands. The more that we start to ask these for these commitments, I believe the more that the organizations that we align ourselves with will really start to heave that call because their one voice may not make a difference, but of course, a business of voices certainly can.

Dr. Hildreth/Meharry:  I guess my call to action is to remind people that leadership matters and we need to elect leaders who will do the things and make the right decisions in terms of the planet in our relationship to it.

Also, to remind people that as Gil said earlier, we’re all connected. We breathe the same air, and when I say “we,” I mean the global we. That is why I’m so concerned that unless we vaccinate the whole planet against COVID-19, none of us are going to be safe. Because these variants that we’re reading about and we’re concerned about, they can arise anywhere.  We need to start viewing ourselves as a global population that make decisions based on the fact that all of us are in this together. All seven and a half billion of us are in this together.

Gil Bashe/FINN:  My call to action is this: Invest more in science; invest more in engineering solutions so that we can correct the course; train our experts to be good communicators. And go out today and look at the eyes of a child very closely and say to yourself I imagine that child growing up to be a healthy 92-year-old with clean air and water and soil around them free of contamination so that we all have access to healthy food and water and a healthy world. Now imagine the opposite for that child and make your choice.

Our thanks to the Global Action Summit, hosted by the Belmont University Massey School of Business, for organizing this world-class conversation on planetary health.

The post Reimagining a World for Health and Environmental Health for Sustainable Well-Being – Part 2 appeared first on Medika Life.

Four outstanding thought leaders joined in conversation:

Bob Martineau, JD, a Senior Partner with FINN Partners, a global integrated marketing communications agency, who heads the Environment and Social Impact Group, and the former Commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Environment & Conservation, served as moderator.

James Hildreth, MD, President and Chief Executive Officer of Meharry Medical College in Nashville, the nation’s largest private, independent and historically black academic health sciences center. Dr. Hildreth is also a member of President Biden’s Health Equity Task Force. 

Rachel Hodgdon, CEO and President of the International WELL Building Institute. Rachel joined IWBI in November 2016, bringing her broad sustainability expertise and her track record as a leading global advocate for green schools, better buildings and social equity to IWBI’s work to advance human health through more vibrant communities and stronger organizations.

Gil Bashe, Chair Global Health and Purpose at FINN Partners.  He currently serves as editor-in-chief of MedikaLife, an online health magazine, and is a global correspondent for Health Tech World. He is also an ordained rabbi who is exploring how spiritual strength is a moral compass in addressing many of the world population’s most pressing physical needs.

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Bob Martineau:  I am pleased to convene this important discussion on the intersection of public health and environmental health or planetary health. Thank you all for your participation. The World Health Organization issued a report highlighting the connection between public health and climate change. The report estimates that 250,000 additional premature deaths each year globally are from climate change and without sustained rapid change, the report said these numbers will only increase.   Rachel, I’ll start with you. Can you share your thoughts on this report and what it tells us about public health and the environment?

Rachel Hodgdon/IWBI:  I think that the most important headline in that report is that we’re in a code red moment right now. Some might say that we are running out of time, others say that we have run out of time to experience some of the more dramatic impacts of climate change. I think the other principal findings of that report, and many of the conversations between global leaders that have happened since, is that we’re not on track to meet our targets.

This is a call to all of us to act. It is a call that is so urgent that it threatens our livelihood and the livelihoods of future generations. This means that all of us need to become advocates for making change and all of us need to start making choices about what we invest in, where we shop and what companies and communities, we align ourselves with based on this fundamental imperative to address the climate crisis.  What we’re seeing is a real response to that sense of urgency from younger generations.

We’re starting to see some of the policy levers turn the way that they should in the United States and in other economies. You could say that we’re driving slower off the cliff, and we’ve got to focus on more opportunities to take carbon out of the atmosphere, put it back into the soil, put it back into the land, and not just focus on slowing down what is essentially a collision course with our own humanity.

Dr. Hildreth/Meharry:  I would just add that the Earth can do just fine without humans on it. There are species that have been around for 2 billion years. There are plants that have been around for hundreds of millions of years. My point is that if we’re not careful, the Earth will get rid of us as a pest, so to speak, because we’re not necessary for the survival of the Earth itself. If we’re not careful, it’s going to take steps to rid itself of a species.

The pandemic reminds us that as we move into habitats, we have not been a part of, and as we destroy habitats, that brings us into contact with animals that have pathogens that can be deadly to us. So, that’s just another example of the kind of recklessness that we’re demonstrating by doing some of the things that we’re doing without being mindful of what it does to the earth and to the other species that inhabit it.  I totally agree with everything that Rachel said.

Gil Bashe/FINN:  I’m going to be an optimist here. I think it’s important. I’ve learned that from Rachel and from Dr. Hildreth; people enjoy positive messages, and I think that they’ve laid out the cause for alarm. I want to quote a 19th century mystic, for a moment, not a scientist, not an economist, a mystic, who said, simply, if you can break it, you can fix it. I think that through all of the doom and gloom, Bob, you have expressed before your belief that human ingenuity, science, engineering and creativity do give us the ability to fix some of these problems. So, I am going to believe that as well.  I’m going to also draw from what we’ve just heard from Rachel and Dr. Hildreth, which is we’ve got to engage. I’ve learned this certainly from following both of our other panelists, that sometimes to learn, we must unlearn certain behaviors.

Rachel Hodgdon/IWBI:  I totally agree with Gil, I am also an eternal optimist, and I do fundamentally believe that there are ways for us to really get ourselves out of the mess that we’ve created. But I also think that one of the challenges with climate change is that it has seemed to be a topic that’s so far off, that’s so huge, that we as individuals can’t make a difference. We think, yeah, we can solve it, but that’s somebody else’s job. That’s the job of elected and appointed officials. That’s the job of large corporations. So, I think that more than anything, the report that you mentioned in the opening is a call to action for all of us, it’s time for us to stop shifting responsibility in the solutions to others.

Bob Martineau:  With COVID, we saw the impacts were very immediate and real: a person got exposed, and within days, you saw people got sick.  It was easy to connect cause and effect.  However, with many public health issues caused by environmental health issues, the latency period is long term. It takes years for the asthma or the respiratory issues to develop. So, people don’t see the direct connection between cause and effect.  In addition, if you add that other factor Rachel mentioned – the doomsday effect. That is people saying there’s such a big problem and any change will not make any difference anyway.

So, how do we get that call to action? With COVID, it took a while, but people understood that if they wore masks and got vaccines, they could help mitigate the impact. It was individual behaviors that would change as we tried to reach a herd immunity. So, with these longer-term impacts and the magnitude of the problem and people just throwing up their hands in despair, how do we speak to people to get that action?

Dr. Hildreth/Meharry:  One of my biggest concerns is that we can’t ever get out of our own way.  If you look at what happened with the COVID-19 pandemic, science delivered, in record time, safe and effective vaccines. Yet, there are those among us who cannot realize that by taking the vaccines they can help the larger community.  It is not only a selfish thing to do in terms of protecting yourself, but it also allows us to protect the larger community.

What I worry about is, we cannot see that the things that we do now can benefit those who are going to come after us- we don’t seem to care. It’s the same kind of challenge we have with getting people vaccinated and to do the things you need to do. We have to figure out a way to get past that. Otherwise, we’re not going to solve this problem, climate change, or, in fact be able to deal with the pandemic, which is still ongoing. My biggest concern is, how do we get out of our own way and what do we need to do to have that happen? I haven’t thought of a solution to that yet. I’m hopeful that we can do it.

Rachel Hodgdon/IWBI:   I’ll give you a quick list of four and then I will elaborate: (1) You’ve got to make it visual; (2) You’ve got to make it personal; (3) You’ve got to make it actionable; and (4) You have got to make it positive. We have many visual ways to tell the story- the COVID-19 pandemic is one great example; we came face to face with the reality that we drive pollution in our own environment that ultimately accelerates climate change when we all stopped commuting. Also, when we all stopped operating construction equipment and the skies in every major city cleared. That is such an amazing visual. You can do a simple Google and see, you know, Dubai, Los Angeles, any of the world’s major cities before the pandemic and at the height of it.

We also must make it personal. I think one of the biggest regrets that I have about the outset of the pandemic is that we didn’t turn quickly enough to trusted ambassadors, deploying members of communities and spiritual leaders and even celebrities – the people that we know that the public trusts the most, that they can relate to. We need to give people actionable ways to take first steps; we need to lay out a roadmap for the choices that you can make in your own life. It’s less about those performative actions of using your reusable grocery bags or your non plastic reusable water bottles; it’s a lot more about asking people to make bigger choices around how many flights they take per year, or the kinds of cars that they purchase, or even where they vote, or where they vote with their wallet.

Finally, you have to make it positive.  We know through decades of research, that negative messaging, particularly around issues of climate can be debilitating and paralyzing. We need to shift these messages from doom, gloom and what we lose to positive messages of abundance and everything that we have to gain.

Gil Bashe/FINN:  We said often during the COVID period, that we should trust the science, but I’m going to put a twist on that and maybe make this a little more complex. Can we trust scientists, and do scientists understand the science of communication? Rachel touches on that in her points, and Dr. Hildreth talks about this as well, but the reality is our scientists, the people who really convey information, they’re not trained in public health to talk to the public and to mobilize the public. In fact, scientists can be very inspiring, but the reality is they don’t know how to communicate and that’s one thing we need to begin to fix immediately.

The other aspect is who’s responsible here? So let me take my sector.  I think Rachel and Dr. Hildreth will identify with this. Rachel and the International Well Building Institute are doing exceptional work trying to look at how to build a healthier world for the future. Dr. Hildreth at Meharry Medical College is doing a tremendous amount of work and effort to talk about critical public health needs that connect to environmental health. I believe that hospitals occupy about 5% of our commercial space in this country, but they consume about 20% of our energy. So, think about that.

The healthcare sector, which I come from and love, and has done remarkable, miraculous work during the COVID period, to invent vaccines quickly- if it were a country, would rate number five in greenhouse gases, after China, the U.S., India and Russia. Hospitals and health systems would be the fifth largest contributor to greenhouse gases in the world. So, how do we solve this? I’m calling upon the healthcare industry, first and foremost, which is so dedicated to our well-being, to take a stance to do everything possible not to reduce its contribution to climate damage or environmental damage but work diligently with the same creativity and the same science to correct its course.

Bob Martineau:  I think that’s a great point. Modeling best practices and moving from just pure sustainability to advancing causes and improvement in public health and in public environment. I think we’ve spent so long focused on treatments to diseases and impacts and less about the causes. If we don’t move to look at those causes more directly, we’ll continue to just treat diseases and that’s a vicious cycle that never ends.

Stay tuned for the second in this two-part series featured exclusively on Medika Life.

The post Reimagining a World for Health and Environmental Health for Sustainable Well-Being – Part 1 appeared first on Medika Life.