BTS joins the UK Health Alliance on Climate Change

We are delighted to announce that BTS is now a member of the UK Health Alliance on Climate Change (UKHACC), a collaboration of organisations representing health professionals across the UK focused on averting the worst health effects of climate change, while realising the potential health benefits of climate action.

Air pollution is one of the greatest environmental determinants of health, and it shares many common drivers with climate change - e.g. the burning of fossil fuels. Rising temperatures, and other effects of climate change, also interact with pollutants in the atmosphere to further worsen air quality and its impact on lung health.

We believe in improving education and awareness of the harms caused by exposure to poor air quality and climate change, and we do so by providing information and guidance to healthcare professionals on the links between lung disease and environmental determinants of health. In the coming months, we will be working on two position statements, addressing air quality and lung health, as well as the wider issue of climate change and sustainability in relation to respiratory health care.

The UK Health Alliance is a supporter of NHS England’s new Greener NHS unit and the health service’s plan to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to net-zero by 2040 - having been represented on the advisory panel developing the plan. This will require significant practical changes to the way that care is delivered, and this commitment demonstrates the recognition across the health community that climate change is a major health threat, and that action to prevent climate change could improve health.

Our voices are louder in a chorus, so we are pleased to be part of a broader group of like-minded organisations expressing the same concerns and highlighting the same opportunities to improve health. Among the Alliance’s membership are organisations including the Royal Colleges of Medicine, the Royal College of Nursing, the BMA, the Primary Care Respiratory Society and the Faculty of Public Health.. We look forward to what we will be able to achieve as a UKHACC member.

Membership will give BTS the opportunity to influence the health agenda more than we could do alone, at a national and international level, by adding the voice of respiratory professionals to those of over 20 other highly regarded health organisations speaking as one.

Professor Jon Bennett, Chair of BTS said: “Breathing clean air should be a fundamental right, whether indoors or outdoors, poor air quality is linked with lung disease.

“BTS shares many priorities with UKHACC, in particular around the areas that most affect our Members and their patients, such as reducing air pollution, decarbonising the health system and using the recovery from the pandemic to build back greener, healthier, and with less health inequalities.”

While this official announcement was in the pipeline, we have already begun collaborating with UKHACC, and joined them among the signatories of a letter to the Government in June, calling for the new Environment BIll to include new legal limits to the concentration of fine particulate (PM2.5) air pollution, in line with the recommendations of the World Health Organization.

Dr Richard Smith, Chair of the UK Health Alliance on Climate Change, said: “We are delighted that BTS has joined our Alliance. Despite the pressure that the health system has been under in the last 18 months, health professionals are increasingly recognising that we face another major health threat in the coming years - climate change.”

“By advocating together, and acting to improve environmental health, we have the opportunity to prevent the worst effects of climate change while realising many co-benefits to human health. At the same time, we must also reduce the impact of health care on the climate, and this will require the involvement of health professionals from every speciality."

To find out more about the impacts of climate change on health, and how BTS Members can now become involved and support the work of UKHACC, visit the Alliance’s website, where you can register to receive monthly updates. The UKHACC site and newsletter are the best way to keep up to date with all their initiatives, but we will also share details of those particularly relevant to our members on eBTS News.

There is already an opportunity to get involved through an event jointly run by the UKHACC and the Global Climate and Health Alliance later this month. In two free online workshops on Tuesday 27th July, at 09.00 and 17.00, they will be discussing how you can join the growing global movement of health professionals advocating on social media for action that protects environmental and human health.

This will include a recap of the latest science on climate change and human health, a summary of why this year is vital for climate change, what COP26 is and what policies health professionals can be calling for and some general principles and do’s and don’ts of climate and health communications.

If you’d like to learn more about how to talk about climate and health on social media, register now using the links below:

● Tuesday 27th July, 09.00-10.30
● Tuesday 27th July, 17.00-18.30