UNC med school students address climate change

By Will Atwater

A part of Alex Gregor’s childhood was spent growing up in Buncombe County, near Asheville, where he and his family enjoyed canoeing and hiking. 

“I think that’s probably the origin of my environmental consciousness …those experiences with family and friends, outdoors,” he recalled recently.

After college, Gregor held several jobs before deciding to pursue a medical degree. One particular job was in the “social enterprise sector with a focus on global development issues.” He said his passion for the outdoors and his experience working on global issues carried from that career to his new one.

“Seeing the intersection of environmental challenges and human health, from that perspective, was a big part of what motivated me to go into medicine,” he said. “Specifically, to get involved in this movement of planetary health.”

Now Gregor is a fourth-year medical student at UNC Chapel Hill School of Medicine. But he noticed something missing from his medical training.

“What I saw in school was that we talked a lot about health, but not really about some of the big environmental elephants in the room, like climate change, and air pollution or other forms of pollution that really have a huge effect on health,” he said.

Public health and economic crisis

Researchers say that extreme weather events not only take a physical toll on the environment but also are responsible for causing a host of traumatic responses in people who experience the devastation, such as post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and suicide, among others.

A 2022 report published by the American Psychiatric Association, found that “67 percent of Americans agree that climate change is already impacting the population’s health.” While “55 percent of Americans are anxious about the impact of climate on their own mental health.” 

What is more, in 2010, mental illness taxed the global economy by “at least $2.5 trillion in direct and indirect costs, including lost productivity and economic growth,” according to a briefing paper from The Lancet Global Health, published November 2020. The paper projects that by 2030, costs associated with mental illness will increase to $6 trillion. 

Addressing the ‘elephants in the room’

In March 2020, Gregor and a group of his medical school colleagues decided it was time to act. They formed Climate Leadership & Action Network at the UNC School of Medicine (CLEAN UNC).

According to their website, the group has three primary goals: getting medical professionals up to speed on climate topics, working within the health system to reduce waste and greenhouse gasses to “do no harm” to the environment and getting the health care community involved in formulating policy solutions.  

Kenan Penaskovic, associate vice-chair of clinical affairs and director of inpatient psychiatry services, was approached by CLEAN members, who had ideas about how to integrate the topic of climate and its impact on public health into a two-week elective course Penaskovic teaches titled Health and Human Behavior, he said. 

“Over 200 medical…