Can the health sector chart a course to zero emissions and health equity? Responding to the launch of Health Care Without Harm’s Global Road Map for Health Care Decarbonization, participants will discuss the systems change necessary to align global climate and health goals in the 21st century to achieve zero emissions, climate resilient, pandemic-prepared health care.
Join health and climate leaders from around the world for a lively dialogue in three parts – and don’t miss an original poem from the U.S. Poet Laureate Emeritus and inspired music from a Pacific Island nation.
This session was curated in partnership with Health Care Without Harm.
Sonia has worked in health and social care internationally for 30 years as a clinician, in senior hospital management, and in sustainability. She is committed to the transformations needed for a sustainable and healthy planet for all.
Sonia started work for Health Care Without Harm in July 2020 as International Climate Policy Director. In this role, she oversees the work to support health systems around the world, including national and sub-national governments as they move to reduce their climate footprint toward net zero and become resilient leaders in addressing the climate crisis.
Previously Sonia served as the Director of the Sustainable Development Unit (SDU) in the National Health Service (NHS) in England. During her tenure leading the SDU she launched the Greener NHS program, including a commitment to net zero climate emissions, positioning the NHS as the first national health system in the world to do so.
She trained as an Occupational Therapist, holds a Masters degree in Systems Thinking and is a member of the Faculty of Public Health in the UK.
WHO Special Envoy on COVID-19, World Health Organization
David Nabarro is the Co-Director of the Imperial College Institute of Global Health Innovation and supports systems leadership for sustainable development through his Switzerland based social enterprise 4SD (Skills, Systems and Synergies for Sustainable Development). Currently David is Special Envoy of WHO on COVID-19 and Senior Advisor to the United Nations Food Systems Summit. David secured his medical qualification in 1974 and has worked in over 50 countries in multiple positions.
In October 2018, David received the World Food Prize together with Lawrence Haddad for their leadership in building coalitions for action for better nutrition across the Sustainable Development Goals.
Mia Kami is a Tongan singer/songwriter and is currently teaching at Tupou College Toloa in Tonga. Mia is passionate about indigenous sovereignty, climate change, ocean conservation, youth work and education in the Pacific region. She attended the University of the South Pacific where she majored in Law and Politics. Mia channels her passions into songwriting & uses her music to tell her stories as a young Pacific woman. She believes that art is the strongest form of storytelling that connects Pacific and indigenous people to their ancestors & their descendants
Director, Environment, Climate Change and Health, World Health Organization
Dr Maria P. Neira has been directing the Department of Environment, Climate Change and Health at the World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland since September 2005. Throughout her tenure and up until now she has led and advised on policy and management in key areas of environmental health.
Prior to that she served as Under-Secretary of Health and President of the Spanish Food Safety Agency.
From 1993-1998 she was Coordinator of the Global Task Force on Cholera Control.
Dr Neira began her career as a medical coordinator working with refugees in El Salvador and Honduras for Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders). She then spent several years working in different African countries during armed conflicts.
Born in the city of Oviedo, Asturias, Dr Neira is a Spanish national, a medical doctor by training and specialized in Endocrinology and Metabolic Diseases; and Public Health.
Among many distinctions, she has been awarded the Médaille de l'Ordre national du Mérite by the Government of France and received an “Extraordinary Woman” award by HM Queen Letizia of Spain. In early 2019, she was nominated among the top 100 policy influencers in health and climate change.
Prof.K. Srinath Reddy is the President, Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI) and formerly headed the Department of Cardiology at All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi. Under his leadership, PHFI has established five Indian Institutes of Public Health (IIPHs) to advance multi-disciplinary public health education, research, health technologies and implementation support for strengthening health systems. He was appointed as the First Bernard Lown Visiting Professor of Cardiovascular Health at the Harvard School of Public Health in (2009-13) and presently serves as an Adjunct Professor of Epidemiology at Harvard (2014-2023). He holds advisory positions in several national and international bodies and has over 550 scientific publications. Recently published a book ‘Make Health in India: Reaching A Billion Plus’. He is also an Adjunct Professor at Emory and Sydney Universities. He is the first Indian to be elected to the National Academy of Medicine, USA and was awarded several prestigious international and national doctorates and fellowships. He was President of the World Heart Federation (2013-15). He is a Padma Bhushan awardee. He is also an Advisor to the Governments of Odisha and Andhra Pradesh on Health.
Josh Karliner helps lead Health Care Without Harm’s worldwide systems change efforts to build a zero emissions and climate resilient health care sector. He has coordinated HCWH’s international work since 2005, co-creating and developing of the organization’s Global Green and Healthy Hospitals Network, with members now in 76 countries. Closely collaborating with the World Health Organization, Josh also led HCWH’s successful worldwide campaign to eliminate mercury in healthcare. He is author of two books along with a wide variety of academic and popular publications on global environmental and health policy. Josh is a member of the board of directors of the Global Climate and Health Alliance, and the Save the Waves Coalition. He lives in San Francisco, USA.
Chief Scientific Adviser, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office
Professor Charlotte Watts CMG is the Chief Scientific Adviser and Director for Research and Evidence in the UK Government’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO). She is seconded from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), where she is Professor of Social and Mathematical Epidemiology.
Originally trained as a mathematician, with a PhD in Theoretical Mathematics from the University of Warwick, she became interested in global health whilst conducting post-doctoral research on the epidemiology of HIV at the University of Oxford. Moving to LSHTM in 1994, she founded the Social and Mathematical Epidemiology Group, this multidisciplinary group uses mathematical, epidemiological and economic research to assess the impact of current and new HIV prevention technologies and evaluate interventions that tackle the determinants of HIV risk. Charlotte is a global expert in violence prevention and was Senior Technical Advisor to the WHO 10 country population surveys on women’s health and domestic violence; she is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and Foreign Associate Member of the US National Academy of Medicine. She has 200 academic publications and she was included in Apolitical ‘The World’s 100 Most Influential People in Gender Policy’.
Director: HIV and Health Group, United Nations Development Programme
Mandeep Dhaliwal is the Director of UNDP’s HIV, Health and Development Group, Bureau of Policy and Programme Support. Ms. Dhaliwal brings to the organization over 20 years of experience working on HIV, health, human rights and evidence-based policy and programming in low and middle-income countries. She is passionate about equity and justice and work at the intersections of health, gender, environment and climate.
Gary Cohen has been a pioneer in the environmental health movement for thirty eight years. He has helped build coalitions and networks globally to address the environmental health impacts related to toxic chemical exposure and climate change. Gary is Co-Founder and President of Health Care Without Harm (www.noharm.org), and Practice Greenhealth (www.practicegreenhealth.org). Both organizations were created to help transform the health care sector to be environmentally sustainable and anchor institutions to support environmental health and resilience in the communities they serve. In 2013, he was awarded the Champion of Change Award for Climate Change and Public Health by the White House. In 2015, Cohen was named a MacArthur Fellow and was a recipient of a “genius” grant from the MacArthur Foundation.
