Climate disasters used to stop us in our tracks. Now they scroll past in a feed, each one displacing the last before it has time to land. These are not anomalies but the accelerating consequences of human-driven climate change. The crises haven’t become less severe; we have become less able to feel them. Tuning out is how we protect ourselves from feeling too much, but it has a cost.
Behind every headline we scroll past is a patient whose serious illness has just become harder to manage: a missed dialysis appointment, an oxygen concentrator without power, an inhaler that can’t keep up with the wildfire smoke. Their suffering is not abstract, and it is not slowing. Hospice and palliative care professionals are trained to stay present where others look away. That is why we formed Hospice and Palliative Professionals for Planetary Health (HP3H), to bring our field’s expertise to the climate crisis as the public health emergency it is.
The Climate Crisis, Health, and Equity
Climate change is causing more frequent and intense extreme weather events–from heatwaves and wildfires to hurricanes and floods. While these disasters can directly lead to immediate trauma and mortality, climate change also indirectly affects air and water pollution, food and water quality, the spread of infectious diseases, and allergen levels.[1]
These significant health consequences disproportionately affect historically marginalized communities, including individuals living with serious illnesses. For them, the effects of climate change may translate into a higher symptom burden, increased hospitalizations, and greater risk of premature death from cardiovascular, cerebrovascular, or respiratory events.
Seriously ill individuals with already weakened immune systems also have an increased susceptibility to infections due to changing disease patterns. Moreover, climate disruptions sever access to routine and emergency care, which can lead to missed treatments, acute crises, and anxiety that affects quality of life. These health disparities are further compounded by intersectional structural injustices such as race, class, geography, and disability.[2],[3] Climate solutions must therefore be rooted in principles of environmental justice and health equity. HP3H advocates for equitable climate solutions that reduce health disparities and address structural injustices.
Health Care’s Role and Responsibility
The health care industry itself accounts for nearly 5% of global greenhouse gas emissions through energy-intensive operations, extensive supply chains, transportation, and medical waste.[4] So, while the health care sector works to serve its patients, its emissions actively contribute to the climate-related illnesses and injuries that harm them. HP3H is thus committed to reducing the carbon footprint of hospice and palliative care. We aim to advance sustainable clinical practices that prioritize both human and planetary well-being. This includes reducing medical waste, conserving resources, improving energy efficiency, supporting decarbonization efforts, and advocating for environmentally-responsible healthcare systems.
Our Unique Expertise
We already know how to do this work. Every day, hospice and palliative care clinicians sit with people facing futures they didn’t choose and can’t control. We hold space for fear, uncertainty, and grief, and we do it with compassion and respect. We build trust quickly, often with people who have good reason to distrust the medical system. These are the exact skills the climate conversation needs — in exam rooms, in communities, in the halls of state legislatures. When a patient with severe COPD asks whether the wildfire smoke is making her lung disease worse, that is a palliative care conversation. When a family asks how to prepare for the next power outage with a loved one on home oxygen, that is a palliative care conversation. And when policymakers need clinicians who can speak plainly about suffering without flinching from it, we are the ones trained for that role.
Drawing on our interdisciplinary care training and experience to address serious illness, HP3H aims to integrate climate-conscious practices into our work, advocate for environmentally sustainable healthcare systems, and support patients and families in navigating the health impacts of a changing climate with dignity and compassion. HP3H also intends to ensure that seriously ill patients and their families receive care that acknowledges, empowers, and prepares them for the health impacts of climate change.
Our Vision and Call to Action
HP3H envisions a future in which hospice and palliative care professionals lead efforts to reduce the environmental harms of health care, promote justice-centered climate solutions, and ensure that patients with serious illness and their communities are cared for amidst the challenges of climate disruption.
By educating ourselves and others, fostering collaboration, and taking action, we aim to promote the health and reduce the suffering of our patients, communities, and planet. The climate crisis calls for leaders who understand suffering and proactively work to alleviate it. We are those leaders.
For more information about HP3H and to join our group, please visit our LinkedIn page: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/13295327/.
Nisha Shah, DO
Erik Carlson, MD
Jill Denny, MD
Daniel Mahoney, MD
[1] World Health Organization. Climate Change. World Health Organization. Published October 12, 2023. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/climate-change-and-health
[2] Hayden, M.H., P.J. Schramm, C.B. Beard et al. 2023: Ch. 15. Human health. In: Fifth National Climate Assessment. Crimmins, A.R., C.W. Avery, D.R. Easterling, K.E. Kunkel, B.C. Stewart, and T.K. Maycock, Eds. U.S. Global Change Research Program, Washington, DC, USA. https://doi.org/10.7930/NCA5.2023.CH15
[3] Romanello M, Walawender M, Hsu S et al. The 2025 report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: climate change action offers a lifeline. The Lancet, 2025; 406, 2804-2857
[4] World Health Organization. Measuring Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Health Systems. Geneva: WHO; 2025.
Thank you for this stirring call to action. On behalf of our patients, our teams, and our communities we must commit ourselves to a model of planetary health that looks at the whole picture, including how we deliver our care. And as you say so eloquently, it is we who have the expertise in leading these conversations.