[ECO]How Communities Can Prepare Health Care for Climate Change

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How Communities Can Prepare Health Care for Climate Change

Strong health care is the epitome of a climate-resilient community. Emergency responders, primary and secondary care physicians, and nurses are willing to step up to the plate during natural disasters. However, these workers and their organizations are also vulnerable to global warming-fueled extreme weather events.

How can communities prepare health care facilities for climate change? Ordinary individuals like you can do five things to make a difference.

1. Prevent the Closure of Rural Hospitals

The ******* States needs more health care facilities to mitigate the impact of climate change on local populations, not fewer. Unfortunately, the number of rural hospitals nationwide may drop by several hundred in the next seven years. About 700 are at risk of shutting down — with

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— due to financial instability.

Losing these facilities is a massive ***** to the emergency response efforts of remote communities when disaster strikes. The victims can’t receive the care they urgently need, unnecessarily worsening human suffering and driving up the ****** toll.

Federal and state governments should recognize that

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facilities — regardless of profitability — are too big to fail, especially in the time of climate change when communities contend with deadlier weather hazards. Policymakers should leave no stone unturned to keep rural hospitals financially viable and operational.

Private insurance underpayment is the main challenge authorities should address. It accounts for most of the losses financially struggling rural hospitals absorb. A good solution is adopting standby capacity payments, allowing the number of community members to dictate the size of payouts instead of the amount of services delivered. This way, rural health care facilities can generate enough revenue to cover their minimum standby expenses no matter how small the local population they serve.

Another avenue the government can explore is critical access hospital accreditation. The House of Representatives could revisit and ease the eligibility requirements for rural health care providers to earn this designation, reducing the financial vulnerability of more hospitals in remote locations and helping them stay afloat.

2. Support Telehealth to Ease Labor Shortages

Understaffing is another issue plaguing the health sector. Labor shortages are multifaceted problems with demographic, economic, social, financial, regulatory and political components. Aging populations, rural and urban salary discrepancies,

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, reimbursement difficulties, stringent certification requirements and budget cuts are some factors affecting the ability of health care organizations to attract and retain talent.

No silver bullet can solve the sector’s chronic labor shortages overnight. For the time being, more organizations should embrace telehealth to deliver quality care to patients. Most people are either tech-savvy enough or know someone who can help them engage with health care providers through mobile devices over the internet. This alternative is imperfect but workable enough to tap remote professionals and help unburden in-house teams.

3. Advocate for Climate-Resilient Infrastructure Investments

Health care organizations can serve patients during catastrophes only when unaffected — so they should be the last ones standing. Their facilities should withstand or recover quickly from Category 5 hurricanes, flash floods, storm surges, earthquakes, wildfires, heat waves and cold spells.

Moreover,

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generation and water sufficiency should be high on the agendas of ambulatory surgical, birth, dialysis, imaging and radiology providers. Orthopedic centers, blood banks, hospitals, urgent care facilities and nursing homes should also shield themselves from power outages and water shortages.

Despite loud calls for

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, many health care organizations lack the resources to fund vital infrastructure projects. Even community health centers designed to promote equity to historically underserved communities are too cash-strapped to consider these improvements.

The most significant chunk of the federal budget — mandatory and discretionary — already goes to health in one way or another. Anyone can write letters to their state representatives and demand more funding for health care. However, mobilizing private resources to help finance specific critical infrastructure improvements for climate resilience can be more productive and yield results faster.

Ultimately, residents suffer from disaster-susceptible and ill-equipped health care facilities. If you have cash to spare, consider donating to projects along with fellow concerned citizens to bolster the infrastructure medical professionals need to do their sworn duties uninterrupted.

Funding health care construction projects shouldn’t come out of any private individual’s pockets. Still, view it

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for your previous environmentally unsound ways or to give back to the community that embraced you to justify the gesture when feeling torn.

4. Stand up for Medicaid Expansion

Medicaid plans

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, which may vary from state to state. Nevertheless, beneficiaries have fewer things to worry about when they fall ill due to extreme weather.

Sadly, many low-income earners can’t get coverage because their states haven’t expanded their programs as the Affordable Care Act recommends. Even worse, some jurisdictions that have refused to do so are highly vulnerable to climate change, putting their poorer citizens at higher risk of being unencumbered by medical debt.

The Sunshine State is an excellent case in point. Fortunately, Florida Decides Healthcare has launched a campaign to include Medicaid expansion on the 2026 ballot. If you’re a Floridian, donate to this crusade for health care affordability. If you live elsewhere, look for a similar group fighting against barriers to access.

5. Encourage Medicaid Agencies to Adopt Climate-Oriented Policies

State Medicaid agencies have the power to spearhead climate action in the health sector. They can influence policies to promote equity. These agencies add weight to climate change elements when recalibrating financial incentives, favoring health care organizations bent on curbing their

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footprints.

Washington State is Exhibit A. The Evergreen State enables eligible hospitals to

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under the Medicaid Quality Incentive program by encouraging them to monitor and report their greenhouse gas emissions.

If your state doesn’t have a similar incentive program, urge your Medicaid agency to follow suit. Alternatively, start a petition to compel health care policymakers to take climate action more seriously.

How Can You Inspire Your Community to Prepare Health Care for Climate Change?

If it only takes a single matchstick to light up a forest and emit countless tons of carbon into the atmosphere, a single soul can also make a positive impact to meaningfully slow climate change. Galvanize your community into action to ready local health care organizations for intensifying weather events ahead.

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