A group of health advocates took their calls for climate action to Australian decision makers.

 The Climate and Health Alliance (CAHA) is group of health professionals with a mission to build a sector movement for climate action and sustainable healthcare. The CAHA led a delegation of thirty health leaders to Parliament House in Canberra last month to meet with politicians to share concerns about the health effects of climate change.

The delegation represented 15 organisations and met with 33 federal decision-makers. Their key message was that climate change is a health emergency, the biggest health threat of the century, and a national strategy on climate, health and well-being is needed.

CAHA have consulted and developed a discussion paper with proposed solutions: Towards a national strategy on climate, health and well-being for Australia

The discussion paper proposes a thematic framework and presents six key action areas:

• Establishing meaningful national emissions reduction targets and policies
• Establishing effective governance arrangements for the development and implementation of the Strategy
• Developing a sustainable and resilient healthcare sector
• Promoting education and awareness about climate change and health across the health sector and broader community
• Strengthening communication and collaboration between federal, state, local and community health agencies
• Re-establishing national climate change and health research capacity