About Us
Our Mission:
We organize and mobilize the California health community to advocate for equitable systems-level climate action.
Our Theory of Change:
If we organize and enable California’s health community to work in collaboration with the wider climate justice community and put pressure on policy makers and decision-makers,
then we will see bold, urgent systems-level climate solutions because of the social trust and influence our professions can lend to the climate movement.
Who We Are:
We are all part of the Health Community across California
We define health not just in terms of physical well-being, but also in terms of mental, social, and environmental well-being. This broad definition of health requires the engagement and recognition of a wider health community invested in promoting and providing individual and public health.
Climate Health Now defines this wider health community to include, but not be limited to, those involved in public health, clinical care services, community healing, health sector administration, health research, and development of healthcare products. We welcome trainees, students, and those who have retired from these fields.
When all members of the health community work together, more voices are heard and elevated, and better solutions emerge. Only in this way can we achieve our best possible individual, community, and planetary health. By harnessing the trusted voices of all members of the health community, we can work in partnership with our allies towards reducing greenhouse gas emissions and protecting everyone from the health harms of climate change.
We welcome all members of the health community in California to join us. We can – and must – all be climate advocates.
Our Values
We start with climate health.
Our identity as members of the health community is central to our role in the movement. We integrate a commitment to health, equity, and climate into everything we do.
We ground our advocacy in science.
We speak based on scientific evidence.
We understand this is an emergency.
Climate change is an urgent crisis - the science clearly states that our time to act and avert its worst effects is limited.
We are not all affected equally.
Our solutions must be equitable and center those most impacted.
We value diversity and inclusion.
We cultivate a space of equity and inclusion that fosters a diverse community of health workers.
We act in partnership.
Our strength is in organizing health care professionals; we cannot do it all. We take strategic advice from organizations and individuals engaged in policy and community work.
We are moving upstream.
Our clinical care is necessary but insufficient in the face of the climate health crisis. To affect the change we want to see, we know we must use our voices outside of our clinics, exam rooms, and hospital walls.
Our policy action platform aligns with the U.S. Call to Action on Climate, Health, and Equity.
The U.S. Call to Action on Climate, Health, and Equity: A Policy Action Agenda lists ten policy recommendations to provide a roadmap to develop coordinated strategies for simultaneously tackling climate change, health, and equity. Climate change is a public health emergency. We call on our nation’s leaders to act now by mobilizing climate actions for our health, and health actions for our climate. With the right policies and investments today, we have the opportunity to realize our vision of healthy people in healthy places on a healthy planet.
Our Beginnings:
It all started in an exam room…
Ashley McClure, MD has been practicing outpatient primary care in Oakland, California since 2016. She had her climate awakening while at home on maternity leave with her 5 month old daughter, Callalucia born May 2018. That August she happened upon the Inconvenient Truth sequel during one of Calla’s naps, and as a new mama realized her daughter’s safety is incompatible with a fossil fueled ‘business as usual’ world. Then, during the Paradise Fire in November 2018, while breathing unsafe levels of particulate matter for 13 days, she decided to reorient her life around doing everything possible to prevent this being her daughter’s— and all our children’s future. She started organizing a medical professional “day of action” to support and uplift the youth marching in the 2019 Global Climate Strike.
Late in the summer of 2019 Amanda Millstein, MD - Ashley’s patient and a pediatrician in the East Bay - walked into Ashley’s exam room. They’d never met before. Amanda, herself a mom of two young kids, had been grappling with her own climate anxiety, especially around wildfires. In 2018 her parent’s house in Napa had nearly burned twice. No amount of exercise and meditation could shake her fear for her own children’s future, or the future of her patients. Amanda shared this with Ashley, who said: “I don’t think you sound crazy. I feel the same way. But I think there’s something we can do.” Ashley pasted a copy of the U.S. Call to Action on Climate, Health, and Equity in Amanda’s After Visit Summary.
In Fall of 2019 Climate Health Now was officially born. Ashley and Amanda were quickly joined by the following people who played a key role in founding Climate Health Now and whose passion, heart, and drive shaped the organization’s origins.
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Karina Maher is a pediatrician in Los Angeles who practiced clinically for 21 years before deciding that learning about the health effects of climate change and sharing that knowledge with fellow physicians as well as policy makers would serve children even better than the one-to-one care she had been thus far providing. Joining the leadership team at CHN was a powerful way to link with colleagues in the healthcare community who are finding and implementing solutions for climate change on a larger scale. Karina is now on the leadership team of Voting 4 Climate & Health, an organic offshoot of CHN, where patients are encouraged to use their voice through their vote to influence leaders and policies to find climate solutions that will improve the health of all living things.
Karina was born and raised in the Washington DC area and has enjoyed living in California since 1997. She went to medical school at the University of Chicago and completed her residency and chief residency in Pediatrics at UCLA.
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Cynthia Mahoney MD is a retired Nephrologist and Clinical Associate Professor at Stanford (ret) living in the San Francisco Bay Area. When first asked why she does this climate work, her answer was “ How could I not?” She feels that all her training and experience have prepared her for just this role. “It has made me see all too clearly the harms of climate change, but also the tremendous benefits of climate action for health and the unique role that physicians can play”. Ashley and Cynthia met in 2019 as both were encouraging their county medical society to educate and advocate for climate action. So when Ashley suggested helping to mobilize a contingent of health professionals to support the student climate strike - and visit four Congressional offices on the same day, Cynthia was all in. When COVID 19 struck in 2020, the issue of voting became a health threat itself and soon unmasked an assault on democracy aimed at thwarting climate action. That demanded a change in direction, and the Voting4Climate&Health Team of CHN was born. While still closely affiliated with CHN, V4CH has branched off to focus on the intersection of climate change, human health, and a healthy democracy where the voices of our most impacted patients can be heard. Our mission is to promote civic engagement in healthcare, because Voting is a Climate Solution.
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Lisa Patel is the Executive Director of the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health, and Clinical Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Stanford School of Medicine. She is also a member of the Executive Committee for the American Academy of Pediatrics Council on Environmental Health and Climate Change. Lisa received her BS in Biology from Stanford University, her Master's in Environmental Sciences from the Yale School of the Environment, her medical degree from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and completed her training in pediatrics at UCSF. She is a former Presidential Management Fellow for the Environmental Protection Agency.
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Sarah is a pediatric resident physician at Children’s National Hospital in Washington, DC and a graduate of the UC Berkeley – UCSF Joint Medical Program. Before medical school, Sarah completed her B.A. in Anthropology at Amherst College and a Fulbright-Nehru Fellowship in North India. Sarah’s love for communities in India and the United States on the front lines of climate change motivated her to join the fight for climate justice. She is passionate about supporting medical trainees’ collective participation in the climate movement. She is a Co-Founder of Medical Students for a Sustainable Future, where she led the development of their principles and advocacy strategy. She was a founding Co-Chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics, California Chapter 1 Committee on Climate Change and Health. She is currently working on adapting the Planetary Health Report Card to Graduate Medical Education. She is also passionate about palliative care, and she is applying to pediatric palliative care fellowship. She lives in Washington, DC with her husband Taylor and their dog Stella.
