3 minute read
Meeting the local health challenges of climate change
JIM KEECH General Manager – Commissioning & Partnerships, Sydney North Health Network
An urban Primary Health Network weights impacts and opportunities
In 2020, Sydney North Health Network (SNHN) became one of the first operators of an Australian Primary Health Network to publish a Climate Change and Health Strategy.
The Strategy, developed with the support of AHHA, outlines SNHN’s aim, as a trusted, locally focused health organisation, to work with its local communities and primary healthcare providers to build resilience, raise awareness and reduce the impacts of extreme weather events on health. These impacts include direct consequences, such as bushfires leading to poor air quality and respiratory ailments, and indirect consequences, such as deteriorating mental health in the face of environmental degradation and experience of extreme weather events.
Climate change and related health impacts have long been understood and discussed at a strategic level at SNHN, and informally factored into activities and discussions with stakeholders. But there had been no blueprint of specific actions that would build community resilience in respect to climate-related health impacts. This may be a familiar situation for many PHNs. For SNHN, it was the heavy smoke that hung over Sydney during the 2019-20 summer, and the bushfires across Australia more generally, that made clear the need to consider the impacts of climate change in its regional work. The subsequent experience of COVID-19 and the March 2021 floods across Sydney have only strengthened the case for meeting climate-related challenges on the doorstep.
As the World Health Organization has warned, climate change represents the greatest threat to global health in the 21st century, encompassing infectious diseases, more frequent and intense extreme weather events, threats to food and water supplies, respiratory diseases, and other physical and mental health impacts.
For SNHN, strengthening and better resourcing primary healthcare to deliver business as usual, including identifying health issues, improving system integration, preventing poor physical and mental health outcomes, and promoting health and wellbeing, are central to preventing and mitigating these health impacts. As such, they sit easily within its existing mandate to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of medical services, with a particular focus on vulnerable communities. >
Geographically, SNHN is mostly urban, stretching north from Sydney Harbour to the southern shores of the Hawkesbury River. With nearly one million residents, the region takes in the Local Government Areas of Ryde, Hunters Hill, Lane Cove, North Sydney, Mosman, Willoughby, Ku-ring-gai, the Northern Beaches, and most of Hornsby.
Though a relatively affluent region, SNHN includes pockets of high socio-economic disadvantage. A standout demographic feature is the high proportion of people from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds (25.7%) relative to the state average (21%). Older people, those aged 65 and above, make up nearly 16% of the region’s population. This latter group is forecast to grow nearly 54% over the next 20 years.
What does a Climate and Health Strategy look like in the context of an urban PHN such as this?
For SNHN, the Strategy is a first step to embedding climate change and health as a consideration in everything it does, and the document will evolve in line with community expectations, emerging research, and SNHN’s maturing climate and health capabilities. As noted by the ABC’s Dr Norman Swan at the Strategy launch in November, “each brick is important in building this up to a significant enterprise.”
The inaugural Strategy maps ambitions relating to climate-related health impacts onto five existing priorities within SNHN’s 2018-2023 Strategic Plan. Those five goals are: community activation, system transformation, commissioning, member and provider support, and an exceptional organisation. In each case, the strategy details SNHN’s role in supporting the community, identifies the work that needs to be done and a description of what success looks like.
Goals under the 2018-2023 Strategic Plan Related Climate and Health Strategy goal
Community Activation - Support the community to anticipate climate risks and mitigate the impacts of climate change on health and wellbeing.
System Transformation - Strengthen health system resilience and adaptive capacity to climate-related hazards and disasters.
Commissioning - Embed climate mitigation, adaptation and sustainability in our operations, our people, and our visibility.
Member & Provider Support - Build the knowledge and capacity of all primary healthcare providers to mitigate, adapt and respond to climate hazards and disasters.
An Exceptional Organisation - Embed climate mitigation, adaptation and sustainability in our operations, our people, and our visibility.
For the full Climate and Health Strategy 2020 go to sydneynorthhealthnetwork. org.au/about-us/climate-andhealth-strategy/
