Janice Hawkins has spent years educating Hampton Roads health professionals and policymakers about the critical connections between health care and the climate.
Her work is now gaining national attention. Hawkins, a nursing professor and vice provost for academic affairs at Old Dominion University, was recently named one of 10 finalists in the American Climate Leadership Awards.
The awards, from the nonprofit ecoAmerica, honor individuals and organizations for advancing climate action across the U.S.
Hawkins “equips nurses with replicable strategies, knowledge, skills, and resources to mitigate climate change as it relates to population health, health equity, and justice,” ecoAmerica wrote in its announcement.
WHRO spoke with Hawkins about her local climate work.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
WHRO: You’ve spent more than three decades in the nursing field. What got you interested in climate activism?
Janice Hawkins: Well, as nurses, we're on the front lines of health care, so we do see what impacts health. Since the beginning of my nursing career, we recognized that the environment impacts health. But then, in my role at ODU and community health nursing, what you tend to recognize quickly is that climate and environment impacts populations disproportionately.
We see our patients come in with higher rates of asthma. More students and more children that are on asthma medications now than when I first became a nurse. More patients come into the ER because of high-heat days. So I think seeing the increase in negative health outcomes related to climate change, and then recognizing that nurses are the ones that can make a difference in that, is where I really started to engage in this work.
We're all concerned about our health, and we all live in this world that has climate and has an environment. So within that space, what can we do?
WHRO: You’ve also spoken about how the health care industry impacts climate. What have you learned?
JH: One of the first things you learn when you're in a health professions program is that our goal is to do no harm. So then to be a part of an industry where health care in the U.S. generates 8% of carbon emissions; worldwide it’s 4 to 5%. Directly within our health care systems, we're using more energy, producing waste. We wash 5 billion pounds of linen annually in the U.S. We generate a lot of waste that ends up in landfills and contributes to negative climate input. Some of that waste is for a good reason, but it amounts to a lot.
For example, when I went to nursing school, we learned to take everything that we would ever need to take care of that patient into the room, so that we could save time and save steps. Well, now everything that you've taken into the room is dirty and you can't reuse it on another patient. So a nurse in the western part of the state, Sara Wolford, one thing she did at her hospital out in Carilion is she started a policy where you would lower the linen par levels, and wouldn't take as many into the room. She looked at the policies related to bed change, so if the beds weren't soiled and didn't need changing, then maybe they were changed every other day. And within her facility, she was able to not only reduce the amount of carbon emissions, but also saved $80,000 in the first six months for the hospital.
The health care industry, we need to check ourselves. We need to reduce our own waste. Then we also need to be a part of the policies that would positively influence climate action, and then we need to be prepared to take care of the patients that are impacted by climate change.
WHRO: Tell me about how you’ve integrated all this knowledge into your role as a nursing educator.
JH: The first thing we did was we created a module on climate and health and inserted that in our community health course about four years ago. Students took part in learning about how climate impacts health, learning about how they can influence policy. At the end, we partnered with ecoAmerica, and they could choose to be climate ambassadors if they wanted. We found quite a few of our students were surprised that this wasn't previously in our curriculum. So many of them signed on to be a climate-for-health ambassador after the training, to go out and teach community members about the impacts of climate to health and things they could do to protect their own health or to mitigate against climate change. We had a group of four students who really became engaged, and they then taught 100 other freshman students at ODU. So they became leaders that developed their leadership skills as well.
Within the health care systems in Hampton Roads, of course, we have students that do their clinical rotations there, but I think, more importantly, they're going to be the workforce that staffs the hospitals in the future. So when I think about what we're doing at ODU is we're preparing the future nursing workforce, and the same nurses that are going to have an opportunity to influence these policies, to reduce waste within their hospitals, to provide patient care for patients that are impacted by climate change.
One of my favorite things that we did is we worked with the Virginia Department of Forestry to plant about 100 trees at the Old Dominion University Virginia Beach Higher Ed campus. Nursing is a hard major and sometimes we don't get to get outside as much as we'd like to. So partly, it was just fun. But also we taught the positive impact of planting trees to the environment and to your health.
WHRO: How does it feel to get national recognition for this work, and what’s next?
JH: I have other faculty partners that work with me to engage in this so it's truly a team effort. I was nominated for the award so my role was to submit my application, and I do think part of my desire was to let others know that nurses are engaged in this work.
Nurses are really designed for this work. We have the knowledge for this work. If part of our ethical commitment and our role is to care about the communities we serve and positively influence health in the communities we serve, then sometimes that goes beyond the bedside, and it does go in the community, and sometimes it even goes beyond the community into state policies and national policies.
Once you see this, you can't unsee it. When I think about this going forward, what I hope is that it just exponentially grows. You teach one, and then they teach two, and then they teach four. What I'll do is recruit more to be involved.
