Suellen Breakey

• MGH Institute for Health Professions

Policy Points The US health care system faces mounting pressure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change; motivated institutions and an engaged health care workforce are essential to the development, implementation, and maintenance of a climate‐ready US health care system. Health care workers have numerous profe...

Background Climate change has been shown to be directly linked to multiple physiological sequelae and to impact health consequences. However, the impact of climate change on mental health globally, particularly among vulnerable populations, is less well understood. Objective To explore the mental health impacts of climate change in vulnerable popu...

Aims To examine the perceived knowledge, attitudes and beliefs regarding climate change and health of academic faculty and students in programmes for health professionals and to identify barriers/facilitators to and resources required for curriculum integration. Design Cross‐sectional survey eliciting quantitative and open‐ended responses. Method...

Climate change represents a looming health challenge and a critical area for nursing leadership at all levels of organizations and settings. With a lens on The Future of Nursing 2020-2030: Charting a Path to Achieve Health Equity, addressing climate change-related health consequences should be a major focus and spotlight for nurses and nurse leader...

Extreme heat contributes to heat-related illnesses resulting from heat intolerance, which is the inability to maintain a thermal balance to tolerate heat stress. In the United States, heat-related mortality for older persons has almost doubled in the past 20 years. Other populations at risk for heat-related illness (HRI) include children, pregnant...

Climate change poses unprecedented threats to health, leading to higher rates of heat stress; cardiopulmonary illness; food-, water-, and vector-borne diseases; adverse pregnancy outcomes; poor mental health; and premature death. These impacts are inequitably distributed, with vulnerable populations bearing the greatest burdens. Nurse practitioners...

Health professionals have key roles in addressing the health consequences of climate change. Climate change is the leading public health concern of the 21st century and has implications for population health globally. Our changing climate is exacerbating health conditions with both acute consequences as well as chronic health conditions including n...

The purpose of this integrative review is to examine recent literature on the intersection of SARS‐CoV‐2 (COVID‐19 novel coronavirus) and climate change that will lead to a greater understanding of the complexities of the urgent pandemic linked with the emerging climate crisis. A literature search for peer‐reviewed, English language, literature pub...

Climate change is an urgent public health problem that has looming implications and associated deleterious health consequences. The intersection of climate change and health has broad implications for health professionals in a variety of settings but especially for ED settings. Climate change is already affecting human health and health systems—whi...

This chapter presents a case of an 84‐year‐old white woman who lives in low‐income senior housing in a heavily populated urban area. This case takes place in early August in the northeast United States. The nurse practitioner examines her and finds her to be febrile with acute neurological changes (lethargic, confused, incoherent, and unable to fol...

Climate change is the greatest public health threat of the 21st century and is associated with environmental degradation and deleterious health consequences. In 2019, the Lancet Commission Report on Health and Climate Change: Ensuring that the Health of a Child Born Today Is Not Defined By a Changing Climate (Watts et al., 2019) examined the critic...

Nurse practitioners (NPs) have key roles in addressing health consequences of climate change across the lifespan for patients, families, communities, and populations. The role of the NP in the health and well-being of vulnerable populations is critical in understanding the deleterious consequences of climate change. Older adults are considered a vu...

This chapter addresses the development and advancement of the Center for Climate Change, Climate Justice, and Health (CCCCJH) in the School of Nursing at the MGH Institute of Health Professions, the first nurse-led center emerged from the overwhelming evidence of climate change and its associated deleterious health consequences. The Center steering...

Background: Health professionals have a key role in addressing the health impacts of climate change at several levels: direct patient care, client and community education, health professions education, and through advocacy and health policy development. Method: Recognizing that nurses are the first line in health education, nursing faculty at th...

Background: In 2000, the United Nations (UN) introduced the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), described as a global movement with the primary aim of ending world-wide poverty ("Millennium Summit," 2000). The second phase of the project, known as the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) agenda offers an increased emphasis on lessening th...

Objective: Despite its near complete eradication in resource-rich countries, rheumatic heart disease remains the most common acquired cardiovascular disease in sub-Saharan Africa. With a ratio of physicians/population of 1 per 10,500, including only 4 cardiologists for a population of 11.4 million, Rwanda represents a resource-limited setting lack...

Purpose: Climate change is an emerging challenge linked to negative outcomes for the environment and human health. Since the 1960s, there has been a growing recognition of the need to address climate change and the impact of greenhouse gas emissions implicated in the warming of our planet. There are also deleterious health outcomes linked to compl...

Background: Rheumatic fever (RF) and rheumatic valvular heart disease (RHD) remain important medical, surgical and public health concerns in many parts of the world, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. However, there are no published data from Rwanda. We performed a RHD prevalence study in a randomly selected sample of Rwandan school children using...

Rheumatic heart disease (RHD) in the developing world results in critical disability among children, adolescents, and young adults-marginalizing a key population at its peak age of productivity. Few regions in sub-Saharan Africa have independently created an effective strategy to detect and treat streptococcal infection and mitigate its progression...

The caring relationship between individual health care providers and patients is a critical component of healing. However, caring can result in physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual symptoms in providers that can interfere with their capacity to enter into these relationships. The aim of this study was to evaluate whether auricular acup...

Adolescent violence is a major public health problem. Because of their roles in community and hospital settings, nurses have an opportunity to limit the epidemic of violence. The purpose of this study was to examine the perceived levels of knowledge, the value of further education, resource utilization, and attitudes of nurses caring for adolescent...