Dear medical community, it’s time to engage in the climate movement [PODCAST]

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“I plan to reach out to climate organizations and see what I can do to get involved. Whether that means writing more op-eds like this one or writing to legislators, I now recognize that as part of the medical field, especially in regard to mental health, I have a role to play. I invite all of you in the medical field to join me in this effort.

You can hear the rumblings in certain pockets that, just like with gun control, medicine should stay in its lane and not be involved in issues like climate advocacy. That’s simply not a tenable stance. With a warming planet and without action, the human population will simply get sicker. That stands in direct conflict with our oath to “Do no harm.”

So again, get involved with the climate movement in the best way you know how. Our patients’ and future patients’ lives are on the line.”

Derek Wolfe is a medical student.

He shares his story and discusses his KevinMD article, “Dear medical community, it’s time to engage in the climate movement.”

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Hosted by Kevin Pho, MD, The Podcast by KevinMD shares the stories of the many who intersect with our health care system but are rarely heard from.

Transcript

Kevin Pho: Hi, and welcome to the show, where we share the stories of the many who intersect with our health care system but are rarely heard from. My name is Kevin Pho, founder and editor of KevinMD. Today on the show we have Derek Wolfe. He’s a medical student, and he wrote the KevinMD article “Dear medical community, it’s time to engage in the climate movement.” Derek, welcome to the show.

Derek Wolfe: Thanks for having me. I’m really excited to be here.

Kevin Pho: So we’ll get into your article in a little bit, but first off, can you share your story and your journey to where you are today?

Derek Wolfe: Yeah, absolutely. So I grew up in West Bloomfield and Farmington Hills, Michigan, southeast Michigan, right outside Detroit. I did my undergrad at the University of Michigan. Go Blue, I always have to throw that in there. Before medical school, I did a year of addiction counseling with Dawn Farm Spera Recovery Center, which was a fantastic experience, and then I made my way to medical school at Central Michigan University, where now I’m in the middle of my fourth year. I’m getting to the end, applying to psychiatry residency right now.

Kevin Pho: Excellent. And we’re now talking in the middle of December. For those other medical students who are applying to residency now, what are some tips that you can give them from your experience?

Derek Wolfe: Yeah, I think you just have to be true to yourself, and I know that’s pretty cliche advice. But if you’re just beginning medical school and not sure what you want to do, find experiences that you like. I’ve found that, you know, I have a podcast myself, Vital Discussions, and that has come up so often on the interview trail, because it’s something I enjoy doing. So I think find experiences that work for you, and the rest will fall into place.

Kevin Pho: Excellent, and best wishes on your interviews.

Derek Wolfe: Thank you so much.

Kevin Pho: So let’s get into your KevinMD article, “Dear medical community, it’s time to engage in the climate movement.” Now, for those who haven’t read the article, can you just walk my audience through it and share the story of why you decided to write it?

Derek Wolfe: Yeah, absolutely. So like I said, I have a podcast, and I really like to interview people who can tell stories about topics that are related to medicine in different ways. So I ended up doing an episode on climate change with Dr. Gaurab Basu. I was so inspired by this interview I did, because he really laid out why and how the medical community should get involved with climate advocacy. And so from there, I started engaging a little bit with Medical Students for Sustainable Future and learning a lot more about the climate crisis.

So that’s really where the article comes in, is where I learned more about the issue and tried to write it up and explain, “Hey, I’m a novice to this area. I don’t know much about climate change, frankly. I know it exists. I know it’s important. But I didn’t really know how to get involved.” But Dr. Basu really inspired me, and so I just wrote about that.

Kevin Pho: So please share with my audience: What are some specific connections between health care and climate change?

Derek Wolfe: Yes, so I’ll lay out mental health, for example, because I’m interested in mental health. After Hurricane Katrina, which was a natural disaster, the New Orleans area saw increased rates of mental illness. And I think that’s really important, because with climate change, you see more natural disasters. And so you can expect to see, just logically, that if there are more natural disasters happening, you’re going to see higher rates of mental illness. And so that’s why people in the mental health field should, at least in my opinion, care about climate change. And this applies to so many different things, like air pollution. Pulmonologists and cardiologists can get involved in that way as well.

Kevin Pho: What are some specific ways that not only medical students but clinicians and physicians can incorporate more climate change into their health care practice?

Derek Wolfe: Yeah, absolutely. Well, first of all, just working as an advocate. Writing is a great place to start. I found your outlet to be a wonderful way to get involved, just writing your feelings. Even if you don’t know much, there’s still a space for you to share your story. I think also just having conversations with patients. I think that’s something that Dr. Basu really does frequently, and he educates his patients on why they need to care about the issue. So especially in the primary care setting, but it can happen anywhere where you have a spare minute to talk.

Kevin Pho: So can you give some specific examples where we could incorporate climate change in the exam room? Let’s say I’m a primary care clinician and I have a patient in the exam room with me. What are some specific instances where I can incorporate climate change into that conversation?

Derek Wolfe: You know, if you have a patient who maybe does agriculture, for example, and lives in the Northeast, where maybe you’re seeing higher rates of West Nile than several years ago, you can talk to them about their occupation, where climate change intersects with their occupation, and how they can mitigate risks involved with climate change.

Kevin Pho: And during your medical education, are you seeing climate change incorporated into the curriculum?

Derek Wolfe: Yeah, so I think we’re at a point now where there’s a big push to incorporate climate change education into the curriculum, but as of right now, it’s fairly limited. And I think that’s understandable. There’s so much clinical information that we need to learn, and so it can be a little bit difficult to add these little extra things. But I personally am of the belief that it would be of immense value to teach medical students the impending and current threats of climate change.

Kevin Pho: So we do have a lot of medical educators who listen to this podcast. So if you’re in charge of the medical curriculum, tell me, what specific areas would you incorporate more climate change into, and how would you approach doing so?

Derek Wolfe: Yeah, so I went to a medical school that is really involved in case-based learning, and I think that could be an excellent place, because we really learn through patient stories. And so we go question by question. You can learn about the pathology, physiology, and epidemiology of certain diseases, and that would be a perfect place, as we’re going through these cases with my classmates, where we could have incorporated a little bit of talk about where climate change fits into this patient’s story. So that’s one approach. I’m sure there are many more, and it’s definitely an area to be explored.

Kevin Pho: All right, we’re talking to Derek Wolfe. He’s a medical student, and he wrote the KevinMD article “Dear medical community, it’s time to engage in the climate movement.” So Derek, how can medical students get more involved? I know you mentioned writing in the past, and writing for different platforms. Now, to your fellow medical students, and residents for that matter, what are some other specific ways where they can be advocates for climate change within the health care setting?

Derek Wolfe: There’s a big push within residencies, based on everything that I’ve been learning on the interview trail, where advocacy is a component of the residency program. Days on the Hill, writing to legislators, those are all spaces where residents can get involved, and medical students as well. And there’s a wonderful group out there that I recently joined and engaged with called Medical Students for a Sustainable Future. I’m sure there’s more, maybe there are more groups out there, but this group in particular does a really good job of helping medical students find ways to get involved in their local communities through local chapters at the medical school, and also connects students nationally to collaborate.

Kevin Pho: So for those who want to research more online about that intersection between health care and climate change, what kind of resources do you recommend?

Derek Wolfe: Yeah, so I think that’s a great question. I looked at the American College of Physicians website to be a really good place, of course, with the CDC. But where the ACP comes in is they actually have a nice PowerPoint that really lays out the topic and all the different ways in which climate change affects health. So I’d start there. But there’s plenty of classic climate change literature out there. Although, I like the book All We Can Save that just came out this year. I think it’s a really good way to see, again, the intersection of climate change and other issues.

Kevin Pho: And my final question: What is your take-home message that you want to leave with the KevinMD audience?

Derek Wolfe: Yes, so I think sometimes it’s easy, especially as a medical student, to get bogged down in the nitty-gritty details of learning how to be a good clinician. And I think everyone would argue that that’s maybe the most important thing when you’re studying to be a physician, but not to forget about the other aspects of the world that intersect with medicine, especially climate change, because everyone has a role to play in the battle against climate change. And I hope in listening to this podcast, and/or reading the article, or in other resources, that you find similar inspiration that I did.

Kevin Pho: Derek, thank you so much for sharing your time and insight, and thanks again for being on the show.

Derek Wolfe: My pleasure.

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