Environmental Leader Dr. Vanessa Kerry Delves Into Intersections of Health and Climate at COP28 Global Climate Gathering
Originally broadcast on November 30, 2023
The United Nations Climate Change Conference (known as COP28) is underway and on Dec. 3 it will feature a “Day of Health.” This is the first time the world leaders on climate change will devote an entire day to how climate change is affecting our physical, mental and emotional health.
Dr. Vanessa Kerry, the World Health Organization Director-General Special Envoy for Climate Change and Health, joined us with an overview of what to expect from the discussions, including ongoing efforts to reduce fossil fuels. In fact, new research shows using fossil fuels accounts for 5 million extra deaths a year worldwide.
Dr. Kerry also shared with hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter how she helps her dad, U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry, understand the urgent need to protect human health as temperatures continue to rise.
Conversations on Health Care features in-depth discussions on health policy and innovation with industry newsmakers from around the globe. https://www.chcradio.com
Mark Masselli (00:04)
The United Nations Climate Change Conference, also known as COP 28, will feature a day of health. The first
time the conference has ever devoted an entire day to this topic. Organizers say climate change poses an
imminent and severe threat to human health affecting nearly half of the world's population today, not in some
distant future.
Dr. Vanessa Kerry (00:25)
We are going to have to realize that health is as fundamental as food and water to our daily lives. We're gonna
need policymakers and leaders to realize that, and that's incumbent on every single listener on this channel and
all of us to start to make that call to action and to realize we deserve better.
Margaret Flinter (00:43)
Our guest is Dr. Vanessa Kerry, the World Health Organization Director General Special Envoy for Climate
Change and Health. She is the first person to ever hold this role.
Dr. Kerry (00:54)
For me, the fact that health is an important part of this discussion, I think is an incredible moment for us to
understand how climate change is impacting us really real ways, individually. I mean, if you think about it,
asthma, incidences of asthma attacks and visits to the hospital are going up in the setting of climate change and
air pollution. So people are finding themselves having a harder time breathing or their children, and they're
having to go to the emergency room more often.
Margaret (01:20)
This is Conversations on Healthcare.
Mark (01:30)
Well, welcome Dr. Kerry to Conversations on Healthcare.
Dr. Kerry (01:34)
Thank you very, very much for having me. It's really an honor to join you and your audience today.
Mark (01:39)
Oh, that's great. You know, let's start by asking you to explain the purpose and goals of COP 28 and the Day of
Health, which is set for December 3rd.
Dr. Kerry (01:49)
Thank you for the question. You know, the COP Conference is really, it has several really core goals and the, it's
to really bring people together from around the world and different nations who have different roles and, and,
and responsibilities in what's happening in climate change. To discuss how we take this moment forward and
how we meet those climate change challenges. It's to negotiate what every country is gonna commit to, to help
improve the problem. It's to negotiate how we fix, the problem for countries that maybe don't have funding or
resources or understanding of what's happening in the right, you know, or the capabilities, to measure the
impacts of what's happening. And it's an opportunity to raise awareness about how climate change is impacting
each of our lives in really real ways. You know, I think that for me as a doctor and a mother, you know, and, and
in the role that played in, in working to deliver healthcare to people who don't have it around the world, for me,
the fact that health is an important part of this discussion, I think is an incredible moment for us to understand
how climate change is impacting us really real ways, individually. I mean, if you think about it, asthma
incidences of asthma attacks and visits to the hospital are going up in the setting of climate change and air
pollution. So people are finding themselves having a harder time breathing or their children, and they're having
to go to the emergency room more often. We're seeing people have heart attacks more often. If you think about
Phoenix, you know, Phoenix, Arizona had triple digits for over a month this year, and that isn't just hard to bear
from a heat standpoint. That means for many people, you can't go to work. You can't earn your living, you can't
put food on the table for your family, or you are suffering trouble breathing or your heart, or, you know,
something else is happening that is making you sick so that you can't participate in your life. These are, you
know, the way we're feeling climate change on a very personal level is through health. So having a first ever day
dedicated to health at this big conference is an opportunity, I think, to really shift our focus and our conversation
to prioritize making sure that we are taking care of people so that they can live their lives in all the ways that
they want to and need to.
Margaret (04:14)
Well, I appreciate very much, one of the aim statements for day, the Day of Health to, to do, what it calls
construct resilient, equitable health systems capable of withstanding the impacts of climate change. Uh, you
know, it's bold, it's clear, says what the goal is, and then we bump up against the realities of, so how much are
we investing, in this kind of work? And I, I think the often side of statistic is only 0.5% of the world's financial
aid goes to public health and climate change. So, you know, can we ask you, are you expecting any official
actions or announcements coming outta this day, that demonstrates the muscle that, people are willing to put
behind the health concerns with climate change?
Dr. Kerry (05:00)
So, I mean, I think, yes. My hope is that we certainly start to see a really, really historic COP where we start to
see some very deep and accelerated commitments to what needs to happen to protect all of our well-being and
our health, and to protect our long-term sustainability as countries, as communities, and as individuals. You
know, number one is, without question, we have got to move away from fossil fuel use. And I think that, as I
say that, I wanna be careful. That doesn't mean, you know, abandoning jobs or abandoning livelihoods. It's
about being really thoughtful about what a transition looks like, creating new jobs and green energy for folks so
that we can make the right transitions that ensure that we are protecting the air we breathe the earth, we live in
our long-term food sourcing, and that we're in water and all these things. Uh, but we have to have real
thoughtful conversations, real and thoughtful conversations about what that looks like to reduce the harm, but
also to protect people's jobs and livelihoods and well-being. And I think those conversations can happen coming
out of this COP. I think certainly coming out of the health aspect of things, we can expect to see a number of
things. One, we're asking countries to really think about how they can include health and metrics of health of
their population and, and as part of their nationally determined contributions to climate change. So thinking
about how countries can really include doing better in health outcomes and protecting human health, and
investments in strong health systems, meaning the hospitals, the services, the ability for people to get the, the
services they need in health. And I think that we'll see an opportunity, I think we'll see some real discussions
about how that can be held up as a higher priority among countries. And I think the funding will follow too.
There's a lot of very meaningful discussions happening right now about increasing the amount of funding
available to protect health, either by reducing the fossil fuel use, by ensuring the health systems are actually
better at producing services and not contributing to the environmental impact, that we see. And that making sure
that health systems are prepared to deal with the increase of disease that we're seeing from climate change.
Because health systems here now and today, people here and now and today are feeling that impact of climate
change. When we talk about malaria being transmitted in the United States for the first time ever. You know,
from between states, when we're talking about, dengue and other diseases coming in the United States, we
haven't seen, we're seeing increases of tick-borne illnesses in the us We're seeing 7 million people a year in the,
around the globe die of air pollution. That's more than we saw throughout the entire COVID pandemic. So we
know that we're gonna have to prepare health systems, we're gonna have to have the doctors, the nurses, the
midwives available to care for patients. We're gonna have the medicines on the shelves, the vaccines available.
We're gonna have to have all those services intact around the world to meet the burdens from climate change.
And that's gonna take more funding. That funding exists in the world. It's about mobilizing it and applying it in
the right way. And I think you will see announcements about that as well. And I think that we will also really
see a very strong commitment from countries around the world to recognize how extreme weather, rising heat,
and the impacts of climate change are impacting health that will help drive countries to make better policies that
protect our individual and collective well-being from a health standpoint. Um, and I, you know, and I think we'll
see all of that coming out of this COP. I think the question becomes so candidly, not just what do we hear at
COP, but what is every single action step and the accountability and the actual change we see afterwards. So,
not that I'm not excited for this moment, but I think the real moment for me is gonna be when everybody leaves
this conference, how are we actually accelerating what we're doing to meet this moment? And I think that is
gonna be very important. And part of all of our jobs is to make sure that we see the action we need.
Mark (08:55)
You know, I wanna pull the thread a little on the, the opportunity it provides in, in the scope of the problem.
This is the 28th conference of its kind. But hundreds of millions of people across the globe are experiencing the
impact on, climate change, both affecting their physical and mental health. And obviously, as you've indicated,
is having, an impact on the cost of the delivery system, along with the impact that it's having, sort of the equity
impact, which is very troubling. I guess the question is, why is it taking so long, for health to earn such a
prominent role in this discussion?
Dr. Kerry (09:33)
Oh my gosh, that's a terrific question, and I think it's something I ask myself all the time. I've had a 20 year
career working in closing health equity gaps and really recognizing the fact that we have all the resources, we
have all the technology. We have incredible ability to do extraordinary things. I trained as an ICU physician I
know what it means to have somebody's heartbeat outside of their body. The lungs breathe outside of their body.
And to keep someone alive on the brink of their death in the United States, we can do these things. It's
extraordinary. Yet you can drive down a road in one of our partner countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, and you can
go to a facility where there's not reliable electricity and where a baby dies because the electricity went off, not
because anybody did anything wrong. The injustice of this is unfair. And this, by the way, is happening in the
United States too. We have an epidemic of maternal mortality among black mothers in the United States that is
founded in all sorts of social determinants of health and structural racism and all sorts of things. And I, I think
the reality is that, you know, we have not had honest discussions about the importance of health, but I wanna be
really clear, health in and of itself is important because you need to have health to go to work, to care for your
family, to go to school, to be able to live your life whole and fully and have a high quality of life. You cannot do
that if you cannot breathe. If you have pain in your chest every time you walk, if you can't walk outside your
door because it's 110 degrees for a month, you can't do those things. But what we also have to realize is that
health actually is the difference between whether or not a family lives above or below the poverty line. Half of
the households that have, someone in the household with cancer will fall below the poverty line 'cause or will
have catastrophic costs that they have to face and pay for out of pocket. We know that entire countries who are
not as healthy don't have as much economic success or strength in the world. We also know there's gonna be 1.2
billion climate migrants right now that are gonna be moving around the earth trying to escape the changes from
climate change. We know that 132 million people are gonna be driven into poverty. A third of which come from
the health impacts of this health has a very real role in gender equity in our economics, in our security in our
day-to-Day lives in a really real way, and we've never accepted that in full. But if the second we can embrace
that and realize that investments in health actually become savings across all of these things, the conversation
can change. I'd like to think that after a global pandemic, and when we're looking down the barrel of the
immense health changes from climate change, we can find the, embrace the importance of our health in a way
that we can change the conversation. And I know there's many of us that are really dedicated to that, but we are
going to have to realize that health is as fundamental as food and water to our daily lives. And we're gonna need
policymakers and leaders to realize that. And that's incumbent on every single listener on this channel and all of
us to start to make that call to action and to realize we deserve better than we have been. You know, seeing in
terms of how health has been deprioritized, I think there's a really real and extraordinary moment to change that
conversation and know that I and my colleagues are really dedicated to making sure that health is front and
center.
Margaret (12:42)
Well, Dr. Kerry, you make as compelling a case as anyone could, for this work. Uh, the statistics back, all of it
up the, 5 million extra deaths a year from fossil fuels. The question I guess I have for you is, what's your
strategy? How are you organizing for, forgetting the investment piece, which is huge, pushing back against
those who continue to rebut climate change data, say it's fear mongering, say it's nonsense, and to say nothing of
the impact on health. I ask that in all seriousness, because no one's gonna say it more clearly than you just did.
So what else, besides a clarity of message, do you think is gonna move the needle? And how are you and your
colleagues going to sort of advocate for that in these settings that you now find yourself in?
Dr. Kerry (13:36)
So I think, you know, it's, I love that question. It's something I struggle with in really real ways. We live in a
world today where you can get your information from so many different places, and you can choose to listen to
the quote unquote, other side or opposing opinions, or you can choose to reject it. Um, and I think that COVID
taught me a really powerful lesson that sometimes people just need to understand in very personal terms how
they're being impacted. And the question becomes, how do you communicate that piece? In some cases, when I
was in the ICU, so I worked in the ICU during COVID as an ICU physician, and I had non vaccinating people
who didn't believe in it, who didn't believe COVID was real, come in sick, unable to breathe. And right before
we put the breathing tube in, they would ask me for the vaccine, right? And they would tell me they believe
COVID was real and they wish they had known it. That is not a personal experience I would ever wish on
anybody. But what struck me is that people really suddenly, it became right. It became real. It was impacting
them. And I think one of the things that I think matters, and this is communications though, is helping people to
understand that when they're battening down for the tornado, or they're fighting that extreme heat, or they're
going to the emergency room from asthma for the third time, there's a reason behind that that has changed,
right? And it's, and that reason is real. And if they can, if we can help make those connections in ways that
people can understand that they're being impacted by this, hopefully we can find that common ground
Republicans now actually will acknowledge climate change is real. I think we're struggling to find the
terminology that we become comfortable with, that we can have everybody wanna move in the right direction,
but that means that we're getting impacted by it all of us, right? If we're all sort of suddenly acknowledging this.
And so I think communications does matter. I think it's about also, I'm a big believer that you have to listen to
why people don't believe or to what it is that they're really wanting, needing to be heard. And I don't mean that
in a hokey way. I have had the opportunity to live in many places around the world to be in many communities
that, I did not grow up in, that wouldn't be, you know, my natural community. And that experience has really
taught me that I also have a lot to learn, even from the perspective that I'm at. And so I think that this is about,
it's a long way of saying that we're all in this together, and it's about helping people to understand how they're
impacted about it, and understanding what kind of solutions feels right to them, and thinking about where there's
that overlap. So we can take those first steps together towards the solution. But whether you like it or not, there
is more extreme weather where you, like it or not, more and more people are being impacted by climate change
every day. You know, we're, we're expecting to see an uptick in disease from climate change of all kinds, and
that is gonna impact your lives. So the thing that I just would ask people is just to hold onto the question, what's
different today than two years ago, three years ago, four years ago? And what really is driving that difference?
And I think if it, you know, and, and I think that for a lot of folks, those tra those roots and traces in part can be
to climate change, the threat to their homes, the fact that they don't have insurance anymore for certain storms,
things like that. And I realize I'm a little over the place in this answer, 'cause you're asking one of the hardest
questions. I'm struggling with it. And I think that the strategy is about truth. The strategy is about perseverance.
The strategy is about listening, and it's about understanding that even across our differences, we're in a pretty
shared and existential experience. And how do we find the common way to reach each other within that? And I
think that at least as a crux of a question is where we have to go. I, and I welcome, you know, anyone's opinions
on how to do that better.
Mark (17:28)
Well, there's no question finding that seam of opportunity that connects us is so important. Um, I do wanna sort
of shift away. I know when you were talking about physical health, you also included mental health, or let's talk
a little bit about mental health, because what's different, from just a year or two ago, since 2008, there are 20
million people who are displaced, because of weather related events. Right? And obviously the impact, that, that
causes anxiety and depression and, you know, PTSD are, are pronounced. Uh, and one of the topics you'll be
addressing is mental health and climate change. I'm wondering if you could just unpack that connection and
what the discussion will focus in on.
Dr. Kerry (18:15)
So mental health is a very, very real and true health burden. I think people often break mental health off from
health as a different category. It very much has physical manifestations. It has, you know, manifestations, your
ability to go to work, to do your day-to-day, in the same way that whether or not you breathe can breathe. And
already a third of the world's morbidity or kind of suffering and disabilities, really was related to mental health
even before kind of this acceleration of climate change. I think the common, you know, climate change though,
is driving huge amounts of anxiety, huge amounts of depression, huge amounts of despair. This is an epidemic
among young people as well who don't know what their future brings or what is the point, right? If we're, our
earth is gonna go up in flames. And so the burden of this is, is really real. And I think we are still continuing to
underestimate its costs, both in terms of the emotional cost, but also even the economic cost in terms of our
productivity and in terms of, frankly, the disservice we are doing to this generation that is rising in many ways.
And, and so we have to have very serious conversations about mental health and, and what that crisis is. It's also
being, frankly, coupled by the amount of conflict and geopolitical turmoil and political divides and sort of just
the unbelievable, I think sort of, you know, place that we find our whole world in right now, which is also
contributing. So we are, I'm a huge proponent mental health. The work we do with Sea Global Health even is
building mental health capacity and Sub-Saharan Africa to be able to support this as a core part of the primary
care work that we do, and really helping to tackle it. But climate change is going to, is driving, a, you know,
terrible mental health outcomes. And so it starts by having a de-stigmatized and honest conversation about the
fact that that exists, about how it's impacting, about understanding that impact, getting more data and research so
that policymakers can understand the depth of this across different sectors. Um, and it's gonna be about finding
the solutions to increase our capacity to address that mental health burden. But like all disease, if you can take
away the driver of the disease, you can prevent a huge amount of that outcome, bad outcome. So this still comes
back to the fact that we need to do a more aggressive job of meeting the target of 1.5 degrees Celsius and
keeping that within reach Paris agreement. We need to better job of closing the inequity gaps around the
financing and around the solutions that we're doing to help communities that are very vulnerable, to adapt to
what's happening in climate change and to build their resilience to shock. And we have to realize that the
changes we're seeing are accelerating. So as much as we might have certain communities who've been denying,
you know, now waking up to it, we can't wake up when it's so late that we can't actually meet the moment and
adapt. And that's the risk that we're starting to see. We already live a third of our days past the 1.5 degree target
that we set. And if you look at the amount of stream weather, and you look at the changes, and you look at the
droughts and you look at the drying up of the rivers in, in this country and elsewhere, the wildfires, you know,
the changes in disease we're in it. So how quickly do we want it to continue to accelerate versus putting a stop to
it? And, you know, and, and how are we going to really prioritize human well-being and our health and our
mental health and all these things. It starts by, you know, reducing the drivers of, of what's, of what's, you know,
causing our strife. And we need to be better at that right now.
Margaret (21:59)
Well, Dr. Kerry, you recently gave a speech where you talked about the power of healthcare workers to meet the
climate change challenge kind of head on. And I know it can seem like an overwhelming topic, but I couldn't
agree with you more from community to critical care. This massive worldwide workforce that shares a hopefully
care and compassion for their fellow humans in the world in which they live is a vital part of the response. But
take, take a a moment and tell us, what do you think our front-line, front-line colleagues, in healthcare can do?
Dr, Kerry (22:34)
I mean, I think healthcare workers the backbone of any healthcare system because healthcare is fundamentally a
human-centered intervention. You, whether you are delivering that high level care in an ICU, whether you are
screening somebody for cancer that prevents them from having to have a complex surgery or, you know, and
catches a cancer early to whether you're holding their hand when they're dying. So they're not alone. All of these
things are human. And as I always say to people, you know, AI or artificial intelligence or augmented
intelligence and technology are wonderful tools when paired with somebody who can leverage them
appropriately. Because when a woman is hemorrhaging and childbirth, somebody has to hang that bag of blood.
And as somebody who received global health, we've trained over 34,000 doctors versus midwives over the last
decade to be able to do just that. And in some of the places where we work that have had the highest maternal
mortality rates in the world, literally 50 times the likelihood of dying in childbirth, then here in the United
States, you know, we've seen zero maternal deaths over five months because we invested in healthcare workers.
Who could be on the front line to diagnose, to manage, and to continue teaching others to do the same. So we
will never have a strong healthcare system until we have those healthcare workers that are on the front lines.
COVID is a great example. We had no medicine, we had no vaccine. You just had doctors, nurses, ancillary
staff, physical rapist, respiratory therapists, people who showed up every day to do the best they could to bridge
people through their acute illness. That's people. So I'm very proud that WHO has been working on an
emergency public health workforce. They're supporting over a hundred countries now, could build out
workforce in a meaningful way for the emergency public health response. If we're gonna see rising burdens of
disease from climate change, we're gonna need more of a workforce to do that. But here's the beauty of a
workforce. It's job creation. It's investment in a sector that's one of the fastest growing in the world and is a huge
driver of GDP and economies. It becomes an opportunity for better care and for prevention. And it turns out that
investments in the healthcare workforce actually are savings where you get a return on investment for every
dollar spent. You can see two to $4 of, of investment out, or a nine to one if you include all the social benefits
that happen. 'cause a lot of these jobs are women who invest in their families. So, I think we have long
underestimated the power of the healthcare workforce. And I'm, I think it's one of the most powerful tools we
have to get us where we need to go.
Mark (25:07)
You know, I wanna talk a little bit about being on the front line. And you said earlier if you, take a drive down,
a road in Africa, you'll find a lot of different things. And you've taken that, drive down the road and been on the
front lines. 'cause you're co-founder and CEO of Seed Global Health, a nonprofit organization focused on health
system strengthening and transformation really through long-term investment and training of health workforce,
as you just discussed, all under your leadership. And this effort has helped improve healthcare for more than 73
million people. Uh, what so impressive, maybe you could share lessons, of how you keep building on this
success, with our listeners.
Dr. Kerry (25:53)
Well, thank you for that. I mean, it's a team. We have an extraordinary team. We have a team that spans over
seven countries that bring all of their depth of experience and perspective to bear. And I think that's part of the
strength is that we lean into the diversity of the voices and the viewpoints and the different lenses that
everybody on our team has, which strengthens our work and make sure that we're having the honest
conversations we need to have to do our work. Well, we, I know I think that a seed has grown, over the last
decade. And we have, we have had the reach that we've had. Um, one of the most powerful things we've learned
is that our job is to be in support of local priorities. No matter what community you're working in, the
communities know the best, what the answers need to look like. They know what's been tried. They know what
what hasn't been tried. They know what is culturally works within, and they understand the nuances of, of what
the resources can do. And I think that when you take that viewpoint of being an accompaniment, as my mentor
Paul Farmer used to always say, which is the idea that you walk alongside someone to together with someone to
really be able to help achieve the goals, then we can all bring our different strengths to bear and we can all
support each other through our respective weaknesses to kind of achieve what we need to achieve. Seed is also a
deeply mission-driven organization with the team and partners who are all mission-driven, who all really just
fundamentally believe that it is unacceptable in 2023 that there are two different standards of care in the world.
It's very painful. When I think about the fact that I started this in 2013, and I used to say in 2013 there should
not be two standards of care in the world. And we're a decade later, and I feel like we're continuing to have to
fight a pretty strong battle. And, but I also know it's possible. 'cause as I shared with some of the successes
we've seen with seed, you can get to zero maternal deaths. You can get to places where patients are triaged with
the same acuity speed and appropriate diagnosis in trauma in, in southwestern Uganda that you can see in the
United States. None of this is impossible. It's a choice. We have to choose to make it happen as a collective, as a
community, global community. Those that have resources need to bring them to bear. Those that have the
mission and the time need to come and show up. And I think we have to realize that as long as anybody is
suffering, everybody's gonna suffer. It sounds, you know, it sounds trite. It's really not. It's very fundamental.
We should have learned that in COVID, our failure to meet that moment in COVID meant that 90% of countries
had disruptions of healthcare services. I'll guarantee you, you have listeners right now who has a parent dying
because they were di- or you know, or sick because they were diagnosed too late because of disruption of
services. That's unacceptable. We can do better. And I think that that's really been one of the things we know at
seed that we can make a choice to close these healthcare gaps. And we're very committed to that. Um, but I by
no means can take credit for this. It's been an extraordinary team effort where I learn every day with huge
humility about how we do this work better and, with accountability and to push others to, to help us scale it.
Margaret (29:09)
Dr. Kerry, maybe, in these last few minutes, I'm, I'm reminded of, saying the personal is political. The political
is personal. I note that your father is John Kerry, currently serving as the first US Special Presidential Envoy for
Climate. I've, read your grandmother, I think was an environmentalist or part of, you know, sort of came from
that passion, in your family. Seems like it really is a family affair and I think really has to be a family affair
around those tables, hopefully around Thanksgiving tables this year. There were some discussions of climate.
But tell us, tell us your thoughts on how your, how did your family shape your passion for climate change and,
improving this in the world?
Dr. Kerry (
I am really privileged, by both my parents. My mother actually was an advocate for mental health and
depression at a time when nobody else spoke about it and was very vocal, about what it meant with her own
journey through depression. She wrote a book called “You Are Not Alone, Voices of Hope and Experience for
the Journey Through Depression”. She, and I think that was an extraordinary example of, of, you know,
leadership and tackling of my father obviously has had a very long career in public service and being a very
mission-driven individual who's taught me without question that, there's a lot to be optimistic about in this
world, and we have to be global citizens and to, and to really never turn your back on someone in need. And he
has said that to me in the most private moments, and I've been very privileged to learn huge amount from him.
And my grandmother was indeed an environmentalist and a conservationist. And and she certainly embedded
that in all of her children, which has come down multiple generations. Um, you know, and I'm, I'm married to
someone who's a service oriented human being. So the generations, you know, repeat. I think that what I really
take away from my family story is that what we're fighting for, again, what we face these big challenges, they're
multi-generational. There's no single generation that can tackle these alone or that bears it responsibly and or
bears it, you know, the responsibility alone. And we have to bring our different perspectives and our different
experiences and our different levels of energy and our different, you know, knowledge pieces to solve this
problem. And so my father has been doing extraordinary work in the climate space and I learn a great deal from
him. But I come at this as a physician who's had a long career in health system strengthening and working in
multiple clinical settings and multiple system settings and, and, and bring that to bear in a way that I think I've
been teaching him about the power and the impact of health. Just like I've been learning from my colleagues
around the world and other leaders and folks about what this moment needs. And, I stand by what I said with my
team, right? We all have a different, really important perspective that is gonna shape this conversation. The
question becomes how do we really bring those forward in a way that can be productive action oriented and, and
meet this moment with the urgency that it needs. And so, I suppose what I bring forth from all my family, my
children, my husband, my father, my grandmother, my mother, you know, everyone is, is just a deep belief that,
we have to do better now, today. And we have a responsibility to do that. And if we're not part of the solution,
we're complicit with the problem.
Mark (32:30)
Well, thank you Dr. Kerry, for reminding all Americans that we can do better in both the climate and in health,
care. Uh, and for joining us to discuss this important topic. And thanks to our audience, be sure to go online to
chcradio.com to sign up for our email updates. You can also share your thoughts and comments about this
program. Thank you so much. Congratulations on all the leadership you provide.
Dr. Kerry (32:51)
thank you so much for the conversation.
Margaret (32:53)
Thank you. Wonderful.
Mark (32:55)
Yeah, Absolutely.
Margaret (32:55)
Good work.
Dr. Kerry (32:56)
Thanks.
Margaret (33:00)
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