Exploring Dr. Chris Lemon’s Nonlinear Exploration of the Nexus of Climate Change and Health

After another summer of sweltering heat, extreme flooding, and in several places, unprecedented forest fires, we're thinking even more about climate change and about the nexus of climate change and health. In S8 E1, host Sarah Thorne and Jeff King, National Lead of the Engineering With Nature (EWN) Program, US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), are joined by Dr. Christopher Lemon, a physician and Asst. Professor, Dept. of Emergency Medicine at Johns Hopkins Medicine; Faculty Co-Director of Clinical Programs with the JH Institute for Planetary Health; and Fellow with the Bloomberg American Health Initiative at the JH Bloomberg School of Public Health. Experts project that over 3 billion people are already vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Chris is using what he calls his “superpowers” to assess how climate change is affecting people's health around the world and take action. He's passionate about making a difference in his community and across the planet.

Chris and Jeff met at a conference at the US Fish and Wildlife Service’s National Conservation Training Center where Chris gave a presentation on Climate Change and Global Health. For Chris, the conference was an opportunity to get in front of an audience with different backgrounds but a common interest. “We started to pick up on the mental or physical health implications of some of the EWN projects at military installations. Pretty quickly it became this great synergy of how I bring certain things to the table as part of these complex solutions.” Jeff agrees and notes the magnitude of the opportunity. “These military installations are a wonderful opportunity – across 25 million acres of land – to do something positive for the employees at the installations, the military personnel, and the communities adjacent to military installations. They all can benefit from this interaction with nature.”

Chris compares his experiences in healthcare, particularly with COVID, to the coming challenges he sees with climate change and discusses the alignment of healthcare with EWN. In both, the “traditional” approach has often been to try to control nature to an ever-increasing degree. “Right now, US healthcare contributes roughly 8.5 percent of US emissions. So, we are ‘doing no harm’ with the goal of making people healthy; and yet, ironically, because we're not working within the constructs of nature anymore, we're actually making people unhealthy.” It is this more macro view of climate change and public health that Chris is trying to address at the Institute for Planetary Health. “It focuses on analyzing and addressing the impacts of human disruptions on Earth's natural systems. But importantly, those disruptions have impacts on human health and all life on Earth. We are bringing that into the center of the conversation.

Chris’s story resonates with Jeff and what he is seeing and striving for in the EWN community: “Chris, I admire the energy and enthusiasm with which you approach the challenge of planetary health. It's quite evident that you have so much knowledge to share, as well as the energy to make change a reality.” Jeff and Sarah invited Chris back to talk more about the important work being done by the Planetary Health Alliance, a growing consortium of over 450 universities, NGOs, research institutes, and government entities who are committed to understanding and addressing the impacts of global environmental change on human health and wellbeing. Our conversation with Chris continues in Episode 2 on October 9. We hope you enjoy these special episodes!

For more information and resource links, please visit the EWN Podcast page on the EWN website at https://www.engineeringwithnature.org/

• Jeff King at LinkedIn