GundxChange: Healing in a Warming World:  Designing Healthcare for the 21st Century

John Balbus, Principal, Climate Care Consulting, LLC; Macmillian Scholar, Gund Institute for Environment, UVM
October 3, 2025 from 12-1 p.m.
Farrell Hall, room 006

At the end of the first quarter of the 21st century, healthcare faces considerable challenges: spiraling costs, workforce demoralization and shortages, and disruptive technical advances, to name several.  This is in a context of warming temperatures, rising sea levels, and increasingly severe heat waves, flooding and wildfire smoke events.  The changing patterns of extreme weather stress human systems and health systems alike.  This presentation will highlight progress in designing climate-smart healthcare, from federal initiatives to private sector actions.  Listeners will hear how health systems are affected by climate change and in turn how the health sector in the United States contributes significantly to the problem.  Solutions that address sustainability and resilience at the same time as the other economic and workforce stressors facing healthcare will be described. 

John Balbus is the Principal of Climate Care Consulting, LLC and former HHS Deputy Assistant Secretary for Climate Change and Health Equity. Trained as a physician in both Internal and Occupational and Environmental Medicine, he has devoted his professional career to understanding and addressing the health implications of climate change. He established and directed the HHS Office of Climate Change and Health Equity after serving twelve years as Senior Advisor for Public Health at the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences. He was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2021.