A Dose of Climate Reality: Dr. Vanessa Kerry on Global Health
Dr. Vanessa Kerry is the co-founder and CEO of Seed Global Health, a nonprofit organization focused on health system strengthening and transformation through long-term investments and training of the health workforce. Under her leadership, Seed has helped educate more than 34,000 doctors, nurses, and midwives in seven countries, helping to improve healthcare for more than 73 million people.
Dr. Kerry was also recently appointed as WHO Director-General Special Envoy for Climate Change and Health. She'll play a pivotal role in amplifying WHO's climate and health messaging and undertake high level advocacy.
The intersection of climate change and health is important, and a topic that doesn't get talked about enough. Dr. Kerry has such a unique perspective and there's no one better to learn from on this important topic.
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Episode recorded on Aug 7, 2023 (Published on Aug 28, 2023)
In this episode, we cover:
[02:43]: Dr. Kerry's background in healthcare
[05:08]: Origins and overview of Seed Global Health
[06:20]: Climate change's impact on global health
[09:09]: The healthcare sector’s role in climate change response
[12:03]: Healthcare viewed as a cost, not an investment, despite potential ROI
[16:03]: Valuing health and wellbeing over GDP
[18:38]: The role of leadership, private sector, and individuals in the transition
[22:37]: Dr. Kerry's role at the World Health Organization (WHO)
[28:45]: WHO's climate change policies, strategies, and funding
[30:24]: Overview of the Alliance for Transformative Action on Climate and Health (ATACH)
[32:04]: Funding sources for WHO and challenges of operating like a nonprofit
[33:39]: Balancing energy access in developing nations with sustainability
[35:34]: The private sector's role in shifting from shareholder to stakeholder value
[36:59]: Exploring greener alternatives and the need for a systemic shift
[37:41]: Balancing pragmatism and urgency in the transition
[41:31]: Finding common ground on climate change in a partisan society
[43:01]: How individuals can help change the conversation
[44:30]: The need for more time, funding, and team building at WHO
[45:38]: Seed Global Health's current priorities
[47:12]: Embracing the butterfly theory of impact
[48:51]: Jason's key takeaway from the conversation
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Jason Jacobs (00:00):
Today on the My Climate Journey podcast, our guest is Dr. Vanessa Kerry. Dr. Kerry is the co-founder and CEO of Seed Global Health, a nonprofit organization focused on health system strengthening and transformation through long-term investments and training of the health workforce. Under her leadership Seed has helped educate more than 34,000 doctors, nurses, and midwives in seven countries helping to improve healthcare for more than 73 million people. She also was recently appointed as WHO director: general special envoy for climate change and health. She'll play a pivotal role in amplifying WHO's climate and health messaging and undertake high level advocacy. I was excited for this one because the intersection of climate change and health is such an important one and one that doesn't get talked about enough, and Dr. Kerry has such a unique perspective that there's no one better to learn from on this important topic. But before we start...
Cody Simms (01:01):
I'm Cody Simms.
Yin Lu (01:02):
I'm Yin Lu.
Jason Jacobs (01:04):
And I'm Jason Jacobs, and welcome to My Climate Journey.
Yin Lu (01:10):
This show is a growing body of knowledge focused on climate change and potential solutions.
Cody Simms (01:15):
In this podcast, we traverse disciplines, industries, and opinions to better understand and make sense of the formidable problem of climate change and all the ways people like you and I can help.
Jason Jacobs (01:26):
And with that, Dr. Vanessa Kerry, welcome to the show.
Dr. Vanessa Kerry (01:32):
Thank you. Delighted to be here.
Jason Jacobs (01:35):
It's strange and exciting to have you on the show because in my normal life, I only know you as the mom of two wonderful kids that are good friends with my kids. I got to know the nonprofit that you run, Seed Global, through you being a mom first, but learned of the outstanding work that you're doing there. And then I saw the announcement about the WHO role where you're thinking more at the intersection of climate and health, and that's an area that I'm looking at all the intersections of climate and fill in the blank. But health is one that we've kind of undercovered and you bring such a unique perspective that I'm psyched to have you on the show and to learn from you. So thank you for making the time.
Dr. Vanessa Kerry (02:18):
No, thank you for the invitation. And I think it is really fun to have the crossroads of our lives. I'm so grateful for both your children and the friendships they have with mine and the ones that I've developed with you and Ally. So it's lovely and it's really an honor to be here and impressive what you've built.
Jason Jacobs (02:34):
I agree. And usually we're just talking about kid sports or stuff like that, and we've never actually had the discussion we're about to have.
Dr. Vanessa Kerry (02:41):
It's always kid sports. I know.
Jason Jacobs (02:43):
Well, maybe for starters, just give an overview on your background and what you're up to. And it'd also be helpful just to understand a bit on the journey, because I know you're a practicing physician and you run a nonprofit and you've got this WHO role, but what order did all these things happen?
Dr. Vanessa Kerry (02:59):
I am a physician as you noted, and I've spent the majority of my 20-year career as a physician actually really in addition to working clinically, focusing a lot on the public health space and really thinking about how do we ensure that we close the two accesses of care that exists in the world because there's huge segments of the world that have no access to healthcare. And I really discovered this when I was about 14 and traveled to Vietnam. I was very privileged to go to Vietnam with my father who was at the time working on some foreign policy issues. And the opportunity to go there was very eyeopening because though I had seen poverty in the United States, this was a level and at a scope and scale I'd never really experienced before.
(03:41):
There was no running water, there was no electricity, there's clearly no health access, no clinics. And as I spent more time in other places around the world and saw more and more of that, I really realized that we live in a world of those that have resources and those that do not. And the problem is we're still deeply interconnected. As I went to medical school and did my work in medicine, I ended up taking it time during my medical school to get a master's in the health policy planning and financing.
Jason Jacobs (04:10):
While you were in med school because med school wasn't enough?
Dr. Vanessa Kerry (04:13):
I took a year off, you're allowed to take a leave to go get a different degree. I don't know, it was a glutton for punishment. It was really eyeopening though because I started to understand the history and how some of these dynamics got created and I learned about how colonialism had completely disrupted local communities and people's access to resources and how there's extraction of resources by colonial powers. And I learned about how crazy terms, I'm still struggling to understand like neoliberal economics started to drive things called structural readjustment programs, which was basically the World Bank or the IMF coming in and telling countries how they could spend their domestic budgets and telling them not to spend it on health or education. And what that did was completely undermine the fabric of these countries' ability to have healthy populations and to be able to therefore have economic growth, development, security, gender equity.
(05:08):
So as I've gone on into my career, I ended up spending time working clinically in Africa in a couple of countries where I saw people fly in deliver care and leave. And those people felt really good about themselves, but they weren't really partnering to build capacity or to support the systems to recover from everything that they had been kind of hit by. And it didn't make sense to me. So I started the nonprofit, Seed Global Health with the idea that we could partner with these countries to help build out the needed healthcare workforce, the doctors, the nurses, the midwives that are so deeply needed in these places but that hadn't been funded or grown because of all these different policies that had been put in place. And so, as a result, 36, 37 of the 50 plus countries in Sub-Saharan Africa have critical shortages of healthcare workers. And as a result, they have a quarter of the world's burden of disease and they have only 3% of the world's healthcare workforce with which to address that disease, and that's a problem to make people healthy.
(06:12):
We have supported training healthcare workers. We've trained over 34,000 doctors, nurses, midwives in seven countries in Sub-Saharan Africa over the last decade. And I think just to speak to the climate change journey, as I have spent the last three years running the nonprofit, we've started to see our communities, partner communities get hammered by climate change. The largest cholera outbreak and the longest cholera outbreak in history in Malawi has just happened. And it's all been from tropical storms that have hit the southern part of Africa. We've seen Ebola erupt in Uganda because there's been a combination of habitats. We've seen changes in water levels, salinization that has led to shifts in kidney disease and all sorts of other problems, hypertension. And so, as we're seeing these shifts and changes, we realize that the burdens of disease coming down the pipeline are massive and it's all the more urgent that there's a healthcare workforce to address those burdens of disease.
(07:10):
So it's only accelerated the work that we do at Seed Global Health. And I think the final note that I would just add is, you're a parent, I have two small children and this world is literally on fire. It's either extreme heat that kills 5 million people a year and costs the US over a 100 billion in productivity a year, and that's expected to double by 2030 or it is literal wildfires that masked New York City in a cloak of orange and is ruining our air quality and already 7 million people die a year from air pollution, which is more than in the entire COVID pandemic over all three years. So the urgency of this is only more real for me. That's a long arc to how I got to where I am.
Jason Jacobs (07:58):
If you're focusing on the health aspects, it seems like health will have increasing challenges from climate when it comes to solutions to climate, is that separate and distinct from health? Is it more about playing defense and reacting as the climate continues to change, or are there things that you can do coming from the health side to actually address the problem more systemically?
Dr. Vanessa Kerry (08:26):
No. I mean, it's a great question. There's three considerations that we have to think about in the health and climate intersection. So first of all, the climate crisis is a health crisis. I mean, I just gave a couple of the statistics of the number of people that are dying a year out of just the changes we're seeing in climate change. Climate change is already here and arrived. We're seeing the impacts of climate change in our health every day. And health is the human experience of climate change in many ways because if you get sick and you can't go to work, that's lost money for your family, that's lost productivity into the system. That is increasing challenges and we're seeing this a lot with extreme heat, there's a number of jobs that can't happen when it gets too hot. And so, we're going to start to see huge amounts of services not be able to be completed and all these things.
(09:09):
So it's all deeply interlinked. The three things we have to think about is resilience, adaptation to what's already happening. So building resilience for future events, adaptation to what is already happening in climate change and mitigation. We'll start with the last one. The healthcare sector actually contributes 5% of our greenhouse gases into the system. That's more than the airline industry actually. And the main ways that the health sector is contributing to the greenhouse gas emissions is, one, through the patient care pathway, which is sort of when patients seek services in more industrialized and high income countries, the plastic that gets used, the driving to seek services, the testing, the consumables, all of those pieces drive about 45% of the contributions of the health sector to greenhouse gases. About 50% is actually the pharmaceutical supply company or chain that is happening. And so, that's the plastics, the vehicles, the deliveries and all those pieces. And then about 5% is just hospitals and things emitting stuff into the air.
(10:10):
So there's a real role for the healthcare sector to actually green itself and to help reduce its contribution to greenhouse gases. There is a group of pharmaceutical companies and private sector entities that are banding together to actually try to get to net-zero as quickly as possible and to actually align their distribution systems and things so that they can actually reduce this impact. And that kind of leadership is exactly what we need out of the private sector and is incredibly helpful. The second one is the adaptation piece, which is recognizing that we are already seeing increased burdens of disease from climate change. And so, we have to be able to step in and meet that adaptation. And what that's going to look like, and this is very linked to the resilience, which is our ability to withstand future events, what we need to do is actually build out strong health systems. We can't look at this as a focus, we're just going to stop and just build green electricity to health centers or we're just going to focus on malaria, which seems to be on the rise.
(11:08):
Climate change impacts non-communicable diseases, so cancer, cardiovascular disease, kidney disease, lung disease, it affects vector-borne diseases, Lyme disease, ticks, malaria, dengue. It affects our mental health, it affects maternal health. Women are delivering earlier, babies aren't getting to full weight. We're seeing an impact across the entire health system. The best way for us to manage the onslaught of disease and all the things that are to come is going to be to build those health systems up and we need to invest in these health systems in a way that we never have before. In fact, we usually cut. So that's going to be really important as a solution here, and that will also help build our resilience to future events, in addition to doing things like understanding how health health sectors are vulnerable to climate change like flooding and making sure that medicines are stored higher and things like that. Those are some of the pieces that go to the resilience side of things too.
Jason Jacobs (12:03):
One question that this inspires as I'm listening to you go through this stuff is a common debate if you're looking from a climate change lens is whether the system of capitalism that we've enacted, and that's kind of fueled the industrial revolution and all the goods that have come from it, and of course the unfortunate byproducts that have come from it too in terms of the pollution that we're putting into the sky and all the symptoms and side effects that you were going through. There's debate about whether it's that system, whether we need to keep that system going and swap things out on the fly to do that system in a cleaner, more sustainable way or whether we need a new system.
(12:47):
I want to ask you that same question about the healthcare system. When you think about the healthcare system and the changing ground under its feet as it relates to the climate and the fact that our entire global economy was built assuming a stable climate, and we're increasingly moving into a world where it's destabilized, what are the implications in terms of the system that we've had historically and the best ways to purpose build the system that we need for the future?
Dr. Vanessa Kerry (13:13):
I mean I think it's interesting. We have always, I think traditionally sort of not paid enough for healthcare in the world and it costs money. And the more people age and the more disease that we see and the more people on the face of the earth and the more technology we have, it's going to drive healthcare costs across the board. But the result is for most countries around the world and outside the US... The US actually, well let's start in the US. The US spends more on healthcare per capita than any other country in the world, and we actually have not as great health outcomes. We're in the 40s for certain metrics like maternal mortality and we are seeing an epidemic of maternal mortality now among black mothers in America, and we're sort of ignoring that sector here and there's huge costs of this.
(13:56):
And so, we have not necessarily nailed it, but I think that one of the things that we always see in healthcare is that people view it as a cost not actually as a source of savings. And I think that mistake, it's a problem because it actually shows that for every dollar invested in health, you can see a return on investment of $2 to $4. And we know that healthy populations are needed for economic growth, security, strong communities for social inclusion and gender equity. Further, the healthcare sector is actually a driver to job creation and again, to the gender equity piece, for 70% of healthcare jobs are actually occupied by women. I think we have to accept that health is essential as food and water. And what that means again, is investing in strong universal healthcare systems that actually provide care for all and address the most fundamental preventative and primary care services.
(14:51):
80% to 90% of all disease problems can be addressed through a well-designed primary healthcare system. We've never stopped to invest in that despite 40 years of calling for universal healthcare and primary care because we get driven in part by a lot of industries that are looking to make money and that end up perversing the system over how we're able to provide care for all. And so, I think there's an opportunity for us to really look at health from a different viewpoint, which is this sense of prevention, the sense of primary care and the sense of providing essential services for people's wellbeing and seeing that as a fundamental human right and a necessity to strong communities into a stronger world.
(15:33):
If we've not learned our lesson after COVID where we saw, I mean an unbelievable upending of everybody's ability to exist or to thrive or [inaudible 00:15:46] or to do things and the way that it exacerbated inequities in this world, I think we're really in trouble because that should have been a massive warning about how skewed we are about the importance of health and also how we invest and how we are ensuring the health and wellbeing of all. I think just to take it even up a notch though, beyond health, we have to start to value just our general wellbeing. I just saw a quote that said that economists measure the price of everything and the value of nothing. And I think that what we value matters immensely because if you think about it, we're supposed to be investing in our human experience.
(16:25):
We work, we try to earn money, we try to do these things to provide for our families to have our children have a better experience than maybe we had growing up, but really we have one life to live and we have one opportunity to be on this earth and we have to protect that. But the way we protect that is by focusing on wellbeing, not by focusing on just GDP or economic bottom line. And so, I think there has to be a real shift in what we value and that we value what it means to be human in a different way that is going to mean health, education, equal rights, dignity, a number of things that we are not necessarily championing currently. And so, I think we're facing a pretty existential moment in who we are and how we're going to move forward. I would argue too that climate change is probably the most critical example of that.
(17:23):
We're not even close to hitting the 1.5 degrees mark of the Paris Agreement. We're on track for 2.4 to 2.6 degrees Celsius of global warming, and we are seeing much more extreme weather events faster, more severe. Climate experts are saying we are literally in unchartered territory. That should be terrifying.
Jason Jacobs (17:47):
I think one of the issues with climate change is that it is terrifying and I think it's terrifying to many, but with that, it's like, "Okay. Well now I'm terrified but I don't know what to do about it." And then people might rush to, "I'm going to offset my flights." Or, "I'm going to give up meat." Or, "I'm going to walk instead of drive my car to work." It's not that these things aren't helpful, but to your point, this is a systems-wide change that needs to occur. So let's say collectively we had the will to say, yes, we need to rethink the system to value all the things you just mentioned. One, who's we? Because there's no kind of uniform global decision-making. And then two, what would that even look like? How would we get there? Where would we start? I'm not suggesting that you should have these answers. I mean they're bigger than any one person, but how do you even begin to approach that?
Dr. Vanessa Kerry (18:38):
That's funny. I've been saying a lot that we're facing a pandemic of poor and expedient choices, and that's really coming from leadership. The leadership right now in this world's more worried, I think often about getting reelected or holding onto power than making the right choices for our survival. I think the other problem is that we live in a world that is dominated by social media and people's ability to bury themselves in communities that can perpetuate untruth, sort of the info demic piece where the wrong information is out there. And the problem with that is then it's very hard to communicate the urgency that we face. I'm sorry, my Twitter has been cracking me up by the kind of hate, tweets and things that I get on it that are just grounded in nothing.
(19:22):
It doesn't hurt me, it just makes me laugh because I'm like, these people are so not aware of the risk they are at by just the facts of the world today. My hope is that they start to feel the urgency of this in a way that we can start to get to a different kind of conversation. I've heard that Republicans are now actually, they recognize climate change is real. I think the question for them becomes, how do they talk to their electorate and their base who doesn't want to hear it or doesn't want to believe it and hold onto power? That's the tension that we face. I think that as we start to put the facts out there that investing in health or in climate resilience can actually lead to savings or can lead to better wellbeing or can lead to more productivity or to create jobs, those are win-wins for everybody.
(20:11):
So we just have to figure out how to communicate that in the right way. We also need some strong leadership. I mean, we are going to need leaders to step up today to speak a truth and to save our world because when you are a policymaker or a head of state, you do have the power to help make sure that the right transition points are happening. And I think that as the world goes on fire and extreme heat shuts down economies, there's going to have to be more in rapid action, but we are going to need some bold leaders to take this to really I think press forward on this. And I think we're starting to see some of those conversations happen. I'm ultimately an optimist, so I believe we can get there. But I wouldn't underestimate the power of us as individuals in this either. It's true, we need systems change and we need leadership to build those systems change.
(21:00):
So one is our political leadership needs to be less worried about reelection and we're worried about just our general survival. Two, I think that the private sector has to step in big time and realize that their sustainability as a business is actually totally coupled to a healthy planet because you can't make half our products if you can't access the resources you need to make products or you don't have a market if people are dying of diseases and can't go to work and raise money to be able to buy your products or your labor force can't show up to produce what you're creating. The private sector can come in and really accelerate this transformation too if they want to, would be the second piece. And then back to my point about individuals, we all have a responsibility to change who our leadership is.
(21:49):
We have to go vote. We have to get our neighbors to vote. We have to educate people. We have to engage in conversations and to help people understand the urgency the moment we're in. And so, I think that we do have an individual responsibility here in this moment because we also choose to buy products or not. We can choose to keep doing plastic or we can make a collective decision that we're going to move our business to something else. I do think there's an individual piece to this too. I don't know, I struggle with this, Jason. I mean I really do. Obviously, I don't have the answer. A lot of people don't have the answer, but what I can tell you is giving up is not the answer. And I think we just have to push and advocate for those that are in positions to create that systemic change to do the right thing.
Jason Jacobs (22:37):
Well, there's definitely some follow-ups on that topic, but I want to make sure that we save some time to talk about your work at WHO. So maybe we can segue to that and if there's time we can come back and talk about some of that systems change and bridge building versus fighting and maybe talk a bit about the work of WHO and your role and also just how the opportunity came about and why it made sense to fit it into your overbooked portfolio of time.
Dr. Vanessa Kerry (23:05):
I'm no longer a practicing clinician is the big news. I stepped down from that earlier this year in part to really focus on my work at Seed Global Health. And so, at Seed as we focus on the healthcare workforce, we've really realized the need for the healthcare workforce is only going to grow. So as we're already facing a critical shortage of 10 million around the world, that shortage is going to get worse with the rising burdens of disease from climate change. And so, as I've been working with the WHO around health workforce issues, and I've been increasingly talking to them about the need to link the advocacy around investing in healthcare workforce to the rising burns disease and climate change.
(23:40):
When I was there in April at the fifth Global Forum for Human Resources for Health, which is my big field conference every five years, I had a chance to speak to the director general of the WHO, Dr. Tedros, and we had a long meeting. We were talking about COVID and we were talking about where the world is emerging and we were talking about the need for universal healthcare and the role of the workforce in that and started talking about climate change as the next pandemic that we're really facing and the one that actually is truly killing us here and now today. And having just emerged from COVID, we've got this next emergency happening and we were talking about that and it just led to a really organic conversation of what can we do and how can we help shift the thinking and understanding of how climate and health are really linked.
(24:29):
And so, he offered me the role of playing a special envoy for climate change and health for the WHO to link 20 years of working in strengthening health systems and workforce and the need for health to really link that to the climate discussion and to do three things. One, to really help advocate at the highest levels about this nexus to help change policymakers thinking and understanding of how vulnerable their electorate and populations are to this nexus if we don't change it. Two, to change the funding profile that goes into the space because right now, only 0.5% of climate financing goes to the health sector or goes into the health component of it, which is a problem when we see such direct impact coming from climate change on human health and the long tail of economic problems that causes, I think as I shared a hundred billion in productivity from extreme heat in the United States, there's 160 billion in GDP in India.
(25:25):
It's going to impact every single country as this climate warms. The cost of it is going to be immense and it's going to only grow if we're not careful. And so, in addition to the health costs, there's economic costs and there's security costs. 1.2 billion people are going to be displaced by 2050 as climate refugees. Another up to 132 million will be driven into poverty in the next 10 years. This is real and it's happening now. And so, my job is to also help change the funding so that we can adapt, we can mitigate and we can get resilient to this, so that we don't see those kinds of impacts. And then third is just to serve as an advisor to the director general in this space and to help him think through the opportunities. And so, it's a huge honor.
(26:08):
I mean, I think the WHO has been unfairly lambasted for being bureaucratic and it obviously went under the target of Trump and he cut their funding, but they really are the biggest source of public health advice, data collection and gathering and our response to the global health issues that don't respect borders. The issues that we see from cardiovascular disease to, be it hepatitis, to climate change to maternal mortality, all of those things impact every single country. And there's a repository of extraordinary wisdom, technical data and experts that are at the ready to help us think through what these solutions are. And for countries that don't have a lot of resources, it can be really critical and incredibly supportive.
(26:56):
It's been a privilege to partner with them, to think through how we can take that extraordinary expertise and really make it available more broadly to those that are able to create some action. And I'm just beginning, I only took this role on a couple of months ago and part of it is going to be finding... Though there's a huge amount overlap between my work at Seed and this work with the WHO, part of it is also going to be we have a great team at Seed and it's growing and I'm able to create time and space too to go focus on this next critical piece that is in total support of Seed's work and very aligned with what we're doing because we're fighting for strong health systems. And strong health systems are going to be our most cost-efficient and resilient way to meet climate change. So it's all one and the same.
Yin Lu (27:45):
Hey everyone, I'm Yin, a partner at MCJ Collective, here to take a quick minute to tell you about our MCJ membership community, which was born out of a collective thirst for peer-to-peer learning and doing that goes beyond just listening to the podcast. We started in 2019 and have grown to thousands of members globally. Each week, we're inspired by people who join with different backgrounds and points of view. What we all share is a deep curiosity to learn and a bias to action around ways to accelerate solutions to climate change. Some awesome initiatives have come out of the community.
(28:14):
A number of founding teams have met, several nonprofits have been established, and a bunch of hiring has been done. Many early stage investments have been made as well as ongoing events and programming like monthly Women in Climate meetups, idea jam sessions for early stage founders, climate book club, art workshops and more. Whether you've been in the climate space for a while or just embarking on your journey, having a community to support you is important. If you want to learn more, head over to mcjcollective.com and click on the members tab at the top. Thanks, and enjoy the rest of the show.
Jason Jacobs (28:45):
If you look at those buckets that you outlined around, take the advocacy and policy bucket as an example. I would imagine there's an exercise of determining what types of policies should be enacted and then who can sponsor them and how they actually get from being sponsored to becoming enacted. And same thing on the funding profile side. It's like, well, what are the funding sources we're going to target and where are they allocating money today and where do we want them to be allocated? And then what's our strategy to go about educating and then mobilizing for action? How much of that does the WHO take on versus identifying what needs to be taken on and then passing it off either to partner organizations or educating the broader public? I guess what I'm asking is, how big of an internal team is there and how far does the WHO take it? And then what does that integration look like in terms of who's doing the rest of the work?
Dr. Vanessa Kerry (29:37):
Well, I think that's a great question. I mean, the WHO has a huge man expertise. They have a whole department on environment, climate change and health, which is just an outstanding team of folks that have done everything from gathering data, helping to guide countries on doing their vulnerability and adaptation assessments on the intersection of climate change and health to developing policies, best practices. They are advising the COP28 presidency, the Climate Conference [inaudible 00:30:03]. They're dedicating the first ever day of health this year. So there's a thematic day dedicated to this intersection, and the WHO has been deeply involved in helping to set that agenda. So they have a huge amount. Now, are they able to provide technical capacity to absolutely every country? Not necessarily, but they can create those roadmaps and they do have technical advice and teams that can help.
(30:24):
They've also created something called the ATACH, which is the Alliance for Transformative Action on Climate and Health. And it's really to help ensure that back in COP26, there was a whole ambition to create climate resilience and sustainable health systems among WHO member states. And so, ATACH is really designed to bring together everyone under one umbrella to help engage on this. And so, they have four key working groups, for example, which is financing health commitments that are needed for climate resilience and low carbon systems, climate resilient health systems. And what does that look like? Low carbon sustainable health systems, supply chains. They do quality assurance, they do monitoring, they help mobilize financing, and it's a voluntary network of participants to join and to learn together. And I think creating that kind of platform is also really important because it allows a community to come together and to learn and to share best practices.
(31:19):
And so, the WHO has done huge amounts of work on this and they have unbelievable data and best practices. Part of the job is getting it out there to everyone and having people use it in the right way too, because often some member states might have their own agendas, their own political agendas and don't want to buy into this collective vision. The WHO is certainly not going to say open a coal plant, and yet countries like the UK just opened a coal plant. So the WHO is a voluntary, they don't have a mandatory governance structure to it. And they're also sometimes a little bit reliant on funding that comes from voluntary contributions too, which can make it tricky about how big they can be or how much power they can have, meaning how much human power they have to help do the work.
Jason Jacobs (32:04):
Funded by countries or what's the source?
Dr. Vanessa Kerry (32:06):
By countries, member states and also corporations, others. I mean anybody can give money to the WHO to support work, but the point is most of the budget is voluntary contributions. So it really acts as a giant global nonprofit in some ways and that can be very tricky. And there's a ton of competing priorities. We just emerged from a pandemic and we're talking about pandemic preparedness. They need to cover every health issue out there, but climate change is really just one of the largest priorities now because it has such an impact across all aspects of health.
Jason Jacobs (32:39):
There's a couple of threads I'd love to pull on. One is just when you look at the best ways to address the problem, there's a lot to balance. I mean, here's an example that's probably particularly relevant to you is which so many people in the world still without access to basic electricity as an example of things that we take for granted in the western world. How do you balance bringing those people up from energy poverty with the fact that doing so the most quickly can sometimes mean not using the cleanest sources of energy?
Dr. Vanessa Kerry (33:13):
I think that's where there's a little bit of a misnomer because I think that we can put green energy sources, for example, into a country that can actually be attached to a hospital system. And we have this technology and capability, it's financing that is needed for these countries that don't have the fiscal space to actually enact it. Part of what also happens is that it's going to be important for these countries also to have the support to understand, for example, they might know they want to do green energy and they're committed to green energy and they'll have financing to put a green energy system in place to support a health system, but they need someone to help them understand exactly what the energy needs are at every health center and how to link that to the grid in the main cities and things like that.
(33:51):
So you also need the capacity for the planning piece too. There's often not funding and financing. So for me, the fundamental question is, we are not mobilizing enough financing to support these countries to make those transitions in the way that they need and to sort of support the technical know-how and capacity. We have the capability in all of this, we just choose sometimes not to execute it. And it's true, we need to advance our technology a little bit more in the green energy space, and we do need to be thoughtful about the fact that these countries need to have development and access to energy in these sources. The truth is the, majority of the countries that are most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change are those that least contribute in the first place too. So to kind of sit here and say, we're not going to let countries develop in the way that they need to as the global north that is three countries are responsible for the vast majority of our greenhouse gases is so hypocritical and insane.
(34:47):
But I also think there's an ability to create the fiscal investments that allow for the kind of energy transformations that are needed in these countries that increase access to development, energy, resources, but that are also sustainable. And we all need to be doing this. So I think that it's a global conversation about how we can make that transformation. But if we just provided the funding to support these countries to build capacity, to invest in health and to invest in education such that these populations are able to be healthy, join the workforce, build your middle class and grow, that alone is transformational. We know what that looks like and we know how to do that. It's a little bit of a misnomer to say that we don't have a choice or a pathway forward.
Jason Jacobs (35:34):
Another example is air conditioning. Air conditioning's terrible in terms of a source of emissions, but the hotter it gets, it becomes mandatory from a health standpoint because you need reprieve from being in the heat. I find these things hard to balance. Another one is, we don't want to go backwards, we want everyone to take advantage of the modern lifestyles that we've become used to. Yet with our modern lifestyle, there's so much excess and waste that goes into that. And even things like fast fashion and companies intentionally creating new dongles that are required so that you're forced to go out and buy the next new consumer electronics even though you didn't need it.
Dr. Vanessa Kerry (36:11):
But that's what I'm saying, that private sector has a role in this to be responsible. And I'm sure you've discussed at some point the sustainable markets initiative, but there's 20 task forces that are part of that. Health is one of them, but fashion's another for example, that is really looking at how the private sector can shift stakeholder value over shareholder value, which doesn't mean the shareholders don't make money, but it's about creating a sustainable path forward. We cannot look at the expedient bottom line of our income today, if you will, at the expense of a decade from now. We're not going to survive. All of it is going to cost us more if we don't actually drastically change how we're doing business. And I think we just have to accept the facts. We have to have the courage to do what's right, and we have to make the transformation starting now and everybody's going to have to get on board to some degree.
(36:59):
There is a number of ways that we are in trouble. What we have to say is, what's the problem? So if we need cool spaces and energy, well, there's a lot of different ways to achieve that in greener ways. And not everything has to be perfectly green, but the whole system does, if that makes sense. So if we can also advance carbon capture systems and carbon offsetting and thinking about ways that we can tolerate some of the greenhouse gas emissions because we have ways to offset it, that's going to be critically important too. We're in a big system, but we are going to have to look long and hard at how we do business, how we live. It goes back to that idea of wellbeing and survival.
Jason Jacobs (37:41):
Two other threads I want to pull on, one is the actual path to transition and the balance between speed and pragmatism. And then the other is just the actual politics required to make progress generally. So on the first, it's something I personally wrestle with because while of course we are overdue and the longer we wait, the worse the symptoms will be, it is a transition and fossil fuels are still powering much of the world and many of the world doesn't have access to basic electricity and things of that nature. So how do you think about the patience to understand that it is a transition and not lurching and creating more problems by lurching too fast and getting over our skis with also not allowing for excuses to stall and buy time to continue living off the fat of the land from the polluting infrastructure that brings in the dollars.
Dr. Vanessa Kerry (38:37):
I think the reality is where the urgency is is to get on the right path. It's not going to be instant, but I don't feel like we're 100% on the right path at this point. We are still making decisions to open coal plants or to do things that aren't necessarily leading us in the right direction. Greenhouse gas emissions are going up every year still. That's a problem. If we can figure out what the roadmap looks like so that we peak today, but next year's less and the year after is less and the year after is less, that can bring us into a different direction. We're not going to be able to snap our fingers and fix it totally. It's interesting, right? When you look at the COVID pandemic, that's actually the one exception to having a major drop in greenhouse gas emissions. So if we're going to live our lives in the way that we live our lives and make a transition, it's going to take some time, but we have to start putting in place the shift, and that's the part that is drastically urgent.
(39:32):
In some cases, we do have to be bold and a little bit sudden. I'm not going to pretend to know exactly what those are, but we do have to accelerate the pace at which we are reducing our emissions in that we're making a transition. But we do need to be thoughtful about what that looks like and who it affects and how do you create jobs for people. That's not necessarily my purview. I'm in the health space. I can speak much more confidently to where there's opportunity in health. I think for example, if we are going to be bringing health systems on in places that donor resources, we can bring those systems on to green energy and to cleaner pathways. We can do climate and vulnerability assessments in every country right now if we chose to understand how countries are vulnerable to climate change here and now in their health systems and how we can convert those health systems to be resilient to those and to adapt to the changes in climate change.
(40:26):
I think more pharmaceutical companies could join the SMI Health Task Force and commit to net-zero and to really think through their contributions to the system. And if you have all healthcare related companies as a part of that vision, that's huge. That's 5% less greenhouse gas that we can put in the air if we commit to it. I know the health space a lot better, and I can tell you that I think there needs to be urgent action and everybody needs to be committed to these goals and make the decisions now to create that change. I think that's a place that we're at this point, but what we're doing today is not sustainable, and we're feeling that every day.
Jason Jacobs (41:05):
And as it relates to change, it seems that the most effective way to bring about change would be a unified, aligned overall machine, but we live in a world that is so partisan and divided, at least here in the US. So given that, how do you think about getting to that unified state and how much of it comes from bridge building versus gearing up to fight?
Dr. Vanessa Kerry (41:31):
I think you can find common ground, and I think when a problem is big enough and it's transnational enough and people are feeling it, there is always a path forward. Now, whether it is bold enough, fast enough, or as unified as we want it to be, that takes time and trust. But I think we are getting to a place that we're going to start to find a lot more consensus around how to manage what's happening because wildfire smoke does not respect borders. None of this respects borders, but I think leaders are thinking very seriously about how to tackle what's happening together and to create the right policies in place, but the partisanship is real. And I think part of it is also about how we communicate, to be honest, and being able to allow people to communicate, to give them the tools and the language and the examples to communicate to their constituencies and electorate in a way that allows them to make the right decisions but doesn't alienate is important.
(42:27):
There's those of us that are advocates and engaged in climate change space, for example, that might be able to help think through how do you convince a hard right to champion climate change in a way that doesn't feel like they're caving in on their principles or something like that. And I think you can do that. It's smart. It's being strategic about the words you use and the choices you make, but talking about livelihoods, for example, could be an example. That's my sense of it. I'm not going to pretend to be an expert in this at all. I mean, I'm a healthcare advocate for 20 years and we're still not doing half the things I would've loved us to have been doing. It's a journey.
Jason Jacobs (43:01):
I know you're pretty early in your role at the WHO, but I guess two questions or calls to action. One is just for anyone listening that's inspired by your mission and what you're setting out to do, where do you need help and what kinds of people might you want to hear from? And then secondarily, for those that are listening that are inspired by your work, what's your call to action to them outside of you and your work in terms of what they're doing in their everyday lives with the understanding that our audience is super diverse industry-wise, function-wise and geography-wise?
Dr. Vanessa Kerry (43:36):
It's awesome that you have such an extraordinary audience. What I need help with right now, I mean there's a number of things. One, I need time, which is just the perpetual problem, to continue to learn and to understand how to take the strongest position and to help really drive home the urgency of now and how to also help, again, create some of those talking points or tools for maybe what might be my unlikely ally in this to be able to be powered to make that kind of change. And I think that we all can, to go to your call to action, we can all take that on. You might have a hard right neighbor or somebody who's a climate denier. How do you engage in that conversation in a way that we might be able to create that transformation? And I think we all have a duty as citizens to think about how we change the conversation, change the value system that we're living in, and I think we can all think about how to do that in our industry and how to create bold action and create some of that change.
(44:30):
I want to be able to think about that, so there's time. I need to build my team at WHO, so I want more of a team that can help really drive the work forward, support the WHO team and help build out this advocacy for the financing and for people's understanding of the intersection of climate and health and how to be able to really strengthen this particular nexus. Because again, I think that the climate change and health nexus to me is really critical. Climate change is killing us, and it's killing us through disease, direct trauma, our inability to go to work, all of these things. And so, people need to understand that.
Jason Jacobs (45:06):
To the extent, do you know, Vanessa, what kinds of skill sets are you after or roles do you have, or is it just too early?
Dr. Vanessa Kerry (45:13):
I need the funding first and then I'll build the roles. But we're going to look to have a policy team and researchers and folks that can really help build this out and help us to craft the messaging and to recruit some of those unlikely allies to the cause and to think about how we can do this. So that's forthcoming. I mean, again, I'm only a couple of months into this, so a lot of this is a really rapid learning about what is needed and how to create that kind of service. And then of course, with Seed, we're doing the critical work of building out resilient healthcare systems and workforces that are needed, and we're for countries right now, but we're working with the WHO on their roadmap for an emergency public health workforce that is looking to get a hundred countries to really develop out actually their workforce and be ready for what's coming down the pipeline.
(45:57):
We're working with the Africa CDC to build a roadmap for creating a compact by which African countries can have 15 to 20 years of investment to build out their workforce as well. We're supporting the COP presidency to think about what a day of health looks like and what the deliverables can be. And I think that's very important because this is the first ever day of health, and we want to make sure that we're thinking from a lens of our partner countries, those countries that are most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, how do we make sure they have a voice and their interests are represented? And we are really caring for this critical examples of how human health is getting impacted by climate change and what can be done that can actually be effective. The work that we've done at Seed, we've seen this.
(46:43):
I mean, as we have responded to choleras, as we've responded to Ebolas, we've responded to COVID, as we've responded to noncommunicable diseases, we've seen what the power of a high quality workforce can do to actually save lives and improve health. And so, we know it's incredibly game-changing. We need to grow that impact. And so, there's a lot there that we need help with to grow out, some of that's funding and some of that is others just investing in other areas of the health space so that the whole system grows. And I think what I want everyone who's listening to know is that it's going to sound totally corny, but it is so true, everybody is capable of creating change, and I'm a huge believer in the butterfly theory, and I don't like to call it chaos because I don't think it's chaos. I think it's a butterfly theory of impact.
(47:30):
Butterfly flaps its wings in Mexico, and it creates the tropical storm that impacts both the Philippines. But if we think of ourselves as capable of creating a movement, which we all are, big or small, I think the most important thing is you don't tell yourself you don't have a role in this, meaning you have to tell yourself and understand that you have a role in this and you have to know that you're capable of creating change on a micro level and even a macro level because it's going to take all of us doing some kind of action. And if you are not part of that action, you are part of the problem. And so, I think that that's probably my biggest ask of everyone is do what you can and know that you're part of creating a system that's going in the right direction.
Jason Jacobs (48:12):
Well, that's a terrific point to end on. And usually I say, "Is there anything I didn't ask that I should have or any parting words for listeners?" But that was such a mic drop way to end that I think we should just wrap.
Dr. Vanessa Kerry (48:23):
I'm glad there's one moment, because I feel like a lot of this, I'm sitting here being like, "Oh my gosh, are people listening?" It's really been an honor, Jason, and I'm really grateful for the attention you're bringing to this key intersection and to take a moment to help share the really critical intersection of climate and health and how it has, I think, a real power to both kill us, but to elevate us if we choose it to, and we're going to choose to have it elevate us because we're going to make the right investments.
Jason Jacobs (48:51):
The biggest takeaway that I have from this discussion, I mean there's many, but one that stands out for me is, we talk a lot on the climate innovation world about there's mitigation, there's resiliency, there's removal, but if you look at resiliency, a lot of people, it's like, "Well, we need to avoid wildfires. We need to make homes that are more fire resistant. We need to help build important facilities in areas that aren't going to be impacted by sea level rise or lack of water or things like that," but you don't hear a lot about health as a resiliency issue, and that was the big aha for me in this discussion is that, it's another key area of resilience, which is human resilience.
Dr. Vanessa Kerry (49:26):
It's resilience and adaptation. And also mind you, the beauty of this is if we invest in health systems for climate change, we're also going to be fixing a lot of the health problems that we have already today. And so, it's a win-win, and there's cost savings. It's such a no-brainer to me. I'm very excited always to talk about this.
Jason Jacobs (49:45):
Great. Well, great point to end on. Thanks again for coming on the show, Vanessa. Anyone that wants to learn more or cares a lot about the intersection of climate and health, which should be all of us, then you should track down Vanessa and the important work that she's doing.
Dr. Vanessa Kerry (49:57):
Thank you.
Cody Simms (49:59):
Thanks again for joining us on the My Climate Journey podcast. At MCJ Collective, we're all about powering collective innovation for climate solutions by breaking down silos and unleashing problem solving capacity. If you'd like to learn more about MCJ Collective, visit us at mcjcollective.com. And if you have a guest suggestion, let us know that via Twitter @MCJPod.
Yin Lu (50:25):
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Cody Simms (50:35):
Thanks, and see you next episode.
