The long-awaited National Health and Climate Strategy has been released. Assistant Minister for Health and Aged Care, Ged Kearney launched it at the 28th United Nations Climate Conference (COP28) in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, during the event’s first Health Day, on 3 December.
The Minister also announced that Australia has endorsed the COP28 Declaration on Climate and Health, to be released at the Climate-Health Ministerial, and has joined the Alliance for Transformative Action on Health (ATACHI).
In the strategy’s foreword, Health and Aged Care Minister Mark Butler and Minister Kearney write that the Strategy adopts a Health in All Policies approach, recognising that collaboration across different policy areas is crucial to the development of just and equitable responses to address the impact of climate change on health.
“Good climate policy is good public health policy,” they say. “Emission reduction across all sectors is necessary to reduce the impact of climate change on our health and wellbeing.
“The Strategy also includes action to amplify the relationship between Australia’s climate and disaster policies and preventive health outcomes. Keeping people healthy and out of hospitals will support Australia’s progress to reduce emissions. At the same time, preventing disease will help to ameliorate some of the negative health consequences associated with climate change.”
The strategy sets out a whole-of-government plan for addressing the health and wellbeing impacts of climate change, whilst also addressing the contribution of the health system – encompassing public and preventive health, primary and secondary health care, and aged care – to climate change.
The Strategy commits to action over five years with a vision for ‘Healthy, climate-resilient communities, and a sustainable, resilient, high-quality, net zero health system’.
It is organised around four objectives:
Health system resilience: to build a climate-resilient health system and enhance its capacity to protect health and wellbeing from the impacts of climate change – to ensure the health system provides high quality, equitable, and culturally safe care, and supports healthy communities in a changing climate.
Health system decarbonisation: to build a sustainable, high-quality, net zero health system – to minimise environmental harm caused by the health system and contribute to the achievement of Australia’s overall emissions reduction goals.
International collaboration: to collaborate internationally to build sustainable, climate-resilient health systems and communities – to identify opportunities for knowledge sharing and the development of international standards as well as highlight the ways in which Australia can support its neighbours to protect and promote health in their climate change responses.
Health in All Policies: to support healthy, climate-resilient and sustainable communities through whole-of-government action which recognises the relationship between health and climate outcomes – taking a Health in All Policies approach by promoting the health co-benefits of emissions reductions across society and adaptation action beyond the health system to protect health and wellbeing from climate change.
Croakey will report on the strategy in more detail in coming days.
From X/Twitter
The tweets below are from an earlier session at the Australian pavilion at the COP today. 
See Croakey’s archive of articles on the National Health and Climate Strategy (dating back to 2016)
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