Included in this edition:
- Event: How to Prepare for the Unexpected: Disaster Preparation for Healthcare Professionals
- Event: Climate Change and Mental Health: What to Know and What to Do
- Join Texas PSR for a Health Advocacy Trip to Port Arthur, TX!
- Dell Elective on Environmental Threats to Health Celebrates Big Success!
- Recent Presentations & Publications from Texas PSR Board Members
- Become a Climate & Health Equity Advocate: Action Skills Training
- More Than Refrigerators: Energy Star for the Entire Office and Home
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Are You Prepared for the Next Texas Disaster?
Join this Webinar!
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Monday, June 10, 2024, 7pm CT
Open to everyone, but designed with healthcare professionals in mind.
Free CME Credit Available
Join us for an insightful webinar led by Douglas Havron, RN. Throughout this session, attendees will gain a comprehensive understanding of the State’s Emergency Support Function 8: Public Health and Medical Services.
By the end of the webinar, participants will be equipped to recall their personal preparedness needs, grasp the health and medical response structure in Texas, and discern the 24/7 emergency medical contact information for each Texas region. This session promises invaluable insights for healthcare professionals seeking to enhance their readiness and efficacy in times of crisis.
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Texas PSR Presents: Climate Change and Mental Health: What to Know and What to Do
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Monday, June 24, 2024, 7pm CT
Open to everyone, but designed with healthcare professionals in mind.
Free CME Credit Available
Join us for a crucial discussion on how climate change is affecting mental health. Attendees will explore how climate change can make existing mental health issues worse and trigger new problems like anxiety, depression, and PTSD. Dr. Isom will explain how certain groups, such as children, the elderly, low-income communities, and those already dealing with mental health issues, are more at risk. Dr. Isom will highlight the importance of building strong communities, ensuring everyone has access to mental health services, and incorporating mental health considerations into climate change plans.
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Join Texas PSR for a Health Advocacy Trip to Port Arthur!
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We are so excited to be partnering with the Medical Society Consortium for Climate and Health and the Port Arthur Community Action Network to bring you our first Health Advocacy Trip. On the afternoon of August 2, a group of healthcare professionals (including students) from around Texas will meet in Port Arthur for a training followed by a tour of fenceline communities impacted by fossil fuel transportation, storage and processing. The evening of August 2 we will join community members for dinner and conversation. We will stay overnight and on Saturday, August 3 will host a community health fair for fenceline communities at the West Side Development Center in Port Arthur. Please consider joining us! Free transportation available and we have scholarships for hotel expenses for students, on a first come, first served basis. To express interest and join our email list for more information about the trip, please sign-up here.
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Big Success for TX PSR Dell Elective on Environmental Threats to Health!
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Texas PSR’s elective entitled “Environmental Threats to Health,” is in its fourth year at UT Dell Medical School. Eight 1st and 3rd year medical students learned about everything from the impacts climate change has on cancer to the relationship between clean renewable energy and health. Student projects included patient and clinician education materials on climate change’s impact on pediatric mental health and op-eds about the proposed hydrogen electricity generation plant for Austin, Texas, and the environmental health impacts of the war in Gaza. Texas PSR board members collaborated in a similar elective offered at UT Southwestern Medical School and an elective on human and planetary health at Baylor College of Medicine. Pictured below are two students doing a video presentation on their op-ed on why a new hydrogen energy plant in Austin is a bad idea.
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Recent Presentations & Publications from Board Members
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Texas PSR Board Member William B. Perkison, MD, MPH recently presented at the International Conference on Occupational Health in Marrakesh, Morocco with Dr. Poune Saberi. The title of the poster presentation was “Workers feel Heat and Air Pollution: Expansion of the Role of Heat Stress Programs”. This poster utilized the available literature on the subject that provides evidence that heat stress prevention programs not only need to include temperature and humidity levels into their action plans but air quality as well. Increasing temperatures can exacerbate the toxicity of air pollution including respiratory irritation, the precipitation of cardiovascular events, and absorbing even more heat.
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Dr. Perkison has been busy this spring with several additional speaking and publication opportunities! In March, he gave a lecture to Texas Tech Medical Students about the field of Occupational Medicine.
The Center for Houston's Future interviewed and quoted Dr. Perkison in its most recent publication, "Houston's Future: The Intersection of Climate Change and Health Care". You can read the full report here.
During the 2024 WateReuse Symposium: Removing Barriers, Elevating Opportunities, Dr. Perkison participated in a panel discussion. If you are interested in the 2024 WateReuse Texas Conference, "One Water: The Wave of the Future" in September, you can find detailed information here.
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Become a Climate & Health Equity Advocate: Action Skills Training
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Tuesdays, June 4 - August 20, 2024
Are you interested in expanding your skills in communicating about the intersections of climate change and health most effectively to catalyze action? This 6-part training series will help you do so. Be recognized as a Climate Communications Champion: If you attend or watch at least five of the six sessions in this training series, you will be named a Climate Communications Champion. To recognize your achievement and identify you as a powerful voice for climate and health, you will receive a badge to display on your LinkedIn and Twitter profiles. Learn more and register here.
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More Than Refrigerators: Energy Star for the Entire Office and Home
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We all recognize the Energy Star logo on refrigerators and other appliances. But Texas readers may not know that Energy Star is a great tool for the entire healthcare office to save energy and money. This month, the PSR’s My Green Doctor explains in a ten minute blog how to use the new Energy Star tools created for healthcare: “More Than Refrigerators”.
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My Green Doctor is a free money-saving membership benefit from Physicians for Social Responsibility. Members use the “Meeting-by-Meeting Guide” to learn how to adopt environmental sustainability, save resources, mitigate climate change, and help create healthier communities. The program adds just five minutes to each regular office staff meeting or weekly office “huddle”, making small changes at each meeting that over time really add up. Everyone in your practice can register as Partner Society members at www.MyGreenDoctor.org or at www.MyGreenDoctor.es (si, en espanol). Use the discount code MGDPSR to get full free access to My Green Doctor, save $60 instantly, and save $1000s in the first year. Register today and watch the “Three Minute Video” that explains how easy it is to add My Green Doctor to your next agenda.
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Are you interested in learning more, or getting involved in local actions to prevent the growing threat that nuclear weapons pose to our health and environment? Let us know of your interest and we'll be in touch! Fill out this quick form or email our Executive Director at Director@TexasPSR.org.
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We do so much with so little, imagine what we could do
with just a little bit more!
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To mail your contribution to us, please send a check to our new mailing address: Texas PSR, 3571 Far West Blvd. #3428 Austin, TX 78731
As a registered non-profit under section 501(c)(3) of the IRS code, all donations are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law.
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