New UK Health Alliance on Climate Change

The UK Health Alliance on Climate Change brings together Britain’s major health institutions.  Our aim is to encourage better approaches to tackling climate change that protect and promote public health, whilst also reducing the burden on health services.

Together we:

•    Raise awareness of the risks to health that climate change poses and the benefits (such as reduced air pollution and healthier diet) that tackling it can bring;
•    Support and enable doctors, nurses and allied health professionals to act;
•    Advocate at a national and international level for a strong policy response to protect and promote public health in tackling climate change.

We do this by:

•    Lobbying the UK Governments to ensure that national energy, health, transport, agriculture and local community policy unlocks health benefits;
•    Developing communications tools and opportunities for individual UK health professionals to better inform themselves and advocate on behalf of their patients;
•    Working with local and national partners to help strengthen the NHS’s resilience to, and impact on climate change, and in doing so reduce the financial burden on health services.

The health profession has a duty to protect and promote public health in the face of threats beyond the clinic, and have done so repeatedly, advocating for basic sanitation, vaccination coverage, and against tobacco for decades. The UK Health Alliance continues this tradition, coordinating action, providing leadership, and amplifying the voice and actions of health professionals across the country.