Advocacy for Health Professionals

Advocate with Elected Officials
Your capacity to reduce disaster risk and be part of the solution to climate change is shaped by policies and decisions made by those in power at the community, state, and federal levels. You have more power than you think in helping to shape how your community prepares for and helps to stave of climate change. Your elected officials need to hear from you about the concerns you have about the health impacts of climate change, and your expectations for them to bring about ambitious and equitable solutions.

 

Help your local elected officials to strengthen community resilience. Offer your professional support (by serving on commissions) and ask them use the BRACE program to:

1. Expand disaster response and resiliency plans to ensure the health of all residents is considered and cared for;

2. Strengthen programs and social infrastructure like parks and readily accessible cooling centers (which also increase community cohesion);

3. Address disparities to bring greater justice and equity to community development, housing, siting, access to food, nature and health services;

4. Involve you and the community in planning (particularly community groups who have faced historic discrimination and disinvestment), and ensure cultural connections and traditions are preserved in the process;

5. Strengthen health and mental health services, including making them more accessible and affordable;

6. Update physical infrastructure including municipal services and healthy access to nature;

7. Ensure there is a trusted and effective warning and communication system for disasters, inclusive of plans for reaching and supporting people living with disabilities;

8. Train people who will serve the community during a disaster, including YOU, and;

9. Prepare and respond quickly for post-disaster recovery.

While resilience efforts are necessary to protect the health of people and communities in the face of climate change, they fall short of addressing the problem at its root. Rapid transitions to clean energy and transportation, sustainable infrastructure, and sustainable agricultural practices are critical, requiring multilevel governance, policy instruments, institutional capacity, and investment — inclusive of justice, equity, and health considerations. Meaningful local climate solutions are within reach and can be achieved.

 

Ask your local elected officials to accelerate climate solutions by:

1. Making a visible climate commitment, and regularly communicate progress toward it;

2. Engaging you and the community in the planning for solutions (particularly community groups who have faced historic discrimination and disinvestment);

3. Increasing energy efficiency of government buildings, and helping small businesses and residents do the same with programs to aid and incentivize this work;

4. Rapidly transitioning to clean energy in government buildings and offer the choice of affordable clean energy to residents;

5. Expanding accessible public transit with clean energy options and give incentives for residents to use it.

6. Installing ample charging stations for electric vehicles, and communicating programs for low income electric vehicle purchasing or rebates.

7. Ensuring residents can easily and safely walk, roll, or bike with clearly designated areas, education, and incentives. 

8. Bolstering access to high quality food through local environmentally friendly agriculture, community gardening, programs to provide gardening supplies to residents, farmers markets, food pantries, education, and training programs for youth and others.

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Ask statewide and federally elected officials to accelerate climate solutions by:

1. Passing laws to limit the pollution that harms our health and causes our climate to change.

2. Making policies and investments that rapidly expand affordable and accessible clean energy, electric vehicles and transportation, sustainable public transit, sustainable agriculture, sustainable and affordable housing, community resilience and disaster preparedness, and help to make a just and equitable transition away from fossil fuel use.

3. Holding polluters accountable, and refraining from accepting campaign funding from polluting organizations.

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Prepare to speak with an elected official

Moving policy makers to tackle climate change can be a rewarding task. Your voice as a health professional can make a real difference. When officials hear from trusted professionals like you, they are moved to focus on issues. You can make climate change one of those!

1. Prepare by reading this handout.

2. Find your elected leaders for your city, state, and federally.

3. Look for local connections and leverage points. These include the impacts in your community and the opportunities for solutions. Many things that address climate change, like greenways and electric car charging plans, are also local solutions. Help officials make the connections. Find out their track record on environmental issues using this scorecard or by searching online.

4. Prepare your message. Use this sample script as a starting point. Refer to the 5 Steps for Effective Climate Communications to strengthen your message.

5. Be persistent and clear, and use several means of communication. Elected officials are busy. Use phones, email, their websites or Facebook pages, social media and local newspapers. Connect right before they vote on a climate issue, so your ideas will be fresh in their mind.

6. When you send an email, put your ask in the subject line. Officials sort their email by issue and often count supporters on each side of an issue. Be clear in your subject line what action or vote you are supporting so that you can be part of that count. Form letters are the least effective.

7. Tell a personal story that brings the issue home. Choose issues you care about, and when you speak at a council or commission meeting you’ll make an impression that officials will remember.

8. Say thank you. When your representative does the right thing, acknowledge their actions, and show gratitude.

9. BONUS: watch an example video of someone preparing for and calling their elected official from the faith forum of the American Climate Leadership Summit.

10. To take your advocacy farther, connect with local and national climate advocacy organizations to get involved in their climate advocacy efforts.