After Hours Webinars
After Hours is a webinar series all about climate change and human health, facilitated by Dr Kate Wylie. Each session focuses on one specific aspect of the relationship between climate change and human health—and what the public and health professionals can be doing about it.
Episodes are delivered by a leading health expert in the relevant field. Joining the live audience is free and all are welcome. Recordings of each session are available on this page and our YouTube Channel.
If you’re a doctor, After Hours sessions are CPD accredited by the RACGP and ACRRM and can be submitted as self directed learning for most other colleges. Attendants of the webinars will be provided with a certificate of attendance on request.
About Dr Kate Wylie
Kate is a GP and the executive director of DEA. Her passion about the need for climate action to protect health is evident in her extensive involvement in climate and health advocacy. She is the immediate past chair of DEA and of the RACGP's Climate and Environmental Special Interest Group. She has founded Climate Medicine, an advocacy project whereby she presents to community groups on the health effects of climate change.
In all her work, Dr Wylie seeks to activate her audience so they can become more involved in creating the paradigm shift that we need to combat the climate crisis and ensure the health of our beautiful planet.
“Our planet is worth saving, and so are we.”
Episodes:
Create a safe path to a safe earth
As the world enters an era of climate and ecological crisis, it is time for a historic re-imaging of how we think about and approach security. What could an emergency whole-of-society mobilisation look like? What if we decided to go for it? How do we prepare? This talk introduces PLAN E – a concept for a HyperResponse to the hyperthreat of the climate and ecological crisis. PLAN E involves new language, new concepts, and new security logic to help humanity recalibrate, reorientate, and reclaim our future. These ideas can inform the medical sector’s strategic planning for planetary crisis.
Presented by Dr Elizabeth (Liz) G. Boulton whose doctorate work developed Plan E: A Grand Strategy for the Twenty-first Century Era of Entangled Security and Hyperthreats. This is the world’s first climate and eco-centred security strategy and was published by the US Marine Corp University Press in 2022. More information is on her website at www.destinationsafeearth.com
Trees are Tremendous
Trees should be celebrated for all that they give us as humans and for their integral part in global biodiversity and planetary support. Not only are trees beautiful they also:-
- Boost our physical and mental health
- Filter our air and water
- Provide homes for pollinators, that underpin much of our food supplies
- Cool our communities
- Help protect us from infectious diseases
- Connect to Country
- Help curb climate change- the biggest threat to health this century.
But these incredible things need our protection. Australia is a deforestation hotspot, and this directly harms our health and damages our natural world.
Our expert panelist are:
Dr Marion Carey, public health physician and co-author of Trees the forgotten heroes of our health Report Ms Sarah Dawson, Engagement Manager at WWF-Australia, working on their Towards Two Billion Trees Campaign; Dr Jennifer Sanger, a passionate forest ecologist and science outreach coordinator, co-founder for The Tree Projects; and Dr Jenny Conway, rural specialist GP and proud secretary of her local Environment group in the Yarra Valley. She will share DEAs End Native Forest Logging in Australia position statement.
Fracking with our Health - the health impacts of gas extraction
Fracking and other forms of gas extraction are known to have multiple detrimental impacts on human health. There are direct impacts from the process itself, like air and water pollution, and gas also contributes to global warming and the climate crisis, which is the greatest health threat facing humanity.
Despite this, Gas is big business in Australia. Australia is the largest exporter of LNG in the world and the industry continues to expand into new territory like the Beetaloo Basin and the Scarborough Gas field.
This webinar looks at the many serious effects of gas on human health.
Our expert panelists are:
Professor Melissa Haswell, Professor of Practice in Environmental Wellbeing at the Sydney Uni, Portfolio of the Deputy Vice Chancellor, Indigenous Strategy and Services and School of Geosciences at University of Sydney; Mr Jacob Hegedus, Research Assistant, Deputy Vice Chancellor, Indigenous Strategy and Services at Sydney Uni and Gumbaygnnirr man from the Northern Rivers whose community fought against fracking of their land and won; and Dr Arnagretta Hunter, Human Futures Fellow ANU College Health and Medicine.
Nature, Our Medicine
The natural world provides our life support system- giving us clean air and water, a stable climate and healthy soils to grow our food. Earth’s biological richness, or biodiversity, offers us precious medicines and beautiful places for psychological and spiritual rejuvenation. Yet modern life has seen screen spaces replace green places as we have moved inside and into virtual worlds. This change has not been good for us, or our planet. Lifestyle-related diseases and mental health problems are overwhelming health systems everywhere. Meanwhile, outside, the natural world is falling apart with climate change and mass extinctions of plants and animals. The solution is simple: we need to reconnect to nature.
Join mother, nature lover and GP, Dr Dimity Williams, as she discusses her new book, Nature, Our Medicine: How the natural world sustains us.
Incorporating science, history, stories, and alternative cultural knowledge, Dr Williams makes the case that caring for nature is essential for our wellbeing. And for all life on Earth. With a Foreword by Bob Brown, her book provides an accessible exploration of the link between human health and the natural world.
Biodiversity: A necessity for human health
Fifty years ago the United Nations held the first conference to focus on the importance of the environment. The associated ‘Stockholm Declaration’ led, amongst other things, to what has become the global sustainable development agenda. In that same year, the late Melbourne GP turned politician, Dr Moss Cass, was appointed as our first Australian Minister of the Environment and Conservation. These two events were seminal in framing the current global and national environmental and conservation laws and regulatory frameworks.
Despite these and further initiatives by subsequent advocates, we face a relentless crisis in the state of Australian and global biodiversity.
The 2021 State of the Environment report outlines the sorry state for our country. The current Biodiversity COP15 in Montreal reflects the global efforts to protect biodiversity and avoid mass global extinction.
Presented by Associate Professor Ken Winkel, Biodiversity: a necessity for human health will consider the state of biodiversity, its bi-directional links to human health and steps doctors can take to reverse this threat to planetary health.
Greening General Practice
This webinar provides an overview of climate changes health effects and provide solutions so that GPs can be climate ready and climate friendly.
Our expert panellists are:
Dr Kate Wylie: GP and ED of DEA, Kate introduces the webinar, looking at the case for climate action for the GP community.
Dr Denise Ruth: Denise is involved in multiple projects in her local community and will talk about how GPs can address climate concerns in their clinical practice and be advocates for social change at a grass roots level.
Dr Ross Wylie: Chair Clinical Advisory Committee, Northern Rivers PHN. Ross will talk about how practices can green their premises and reduce the carbon footprint of their practice based and clinical emissions.
Dr Michelle Hamrosi: GP and lactation consultant, Michelle is a passionate advocate for environmental care and will shared her lived experience of the Black Summer Fires and its effect on the health of her community.