2024 Highlights for PSR’s Environment & Health Program December 19, 2024
2024 was a big year for PSR’s work on climate change, health, and environmental justice. Thanks to our generous donors, dedicated activists, and powerful network of chapters for making this such an impactful year. Here are just a few highlights from our work in 2024:
Building Our Capacity
In 2024, PSR said goodbye to longtime Program Director Barb Gottlieb, who continues to collaborate with us in her retirement. In June, we welcomed Paige Knappenberger as our new Environment & Health Program Director. She has a wealth of experience and a rich network of connections in the growing movement for climate justice and health equity.
Building Electrification
PSR partnered with The Gas Leaks project to produce several digital videos about the health harms of gas stoves for their Hot & Toxic campaign. Dr. Brita Lundberg, Dr. Mark Vossler, and medical student/Next Gen Ambassador Alex Conway were interviewed, and the recordings of those interviews were edited into 4 videos for social media.
PSR continues to educate health professionals on the dangers of methane gas. Staff presented the Cooking With Gas: Health Harms from Gas Stoves training to multiple groups and organizations this year, including the California Nurses for Environmental Health & Justice, the National Student Nurses Association, and the Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine. Almost 150 physicians, nurses, health advocates, health professional students, and other health professionals were trained over 2024.
The heroes of PSR’s Building Electrification work are our chapters around the country. Chapters in Washington State, Oregon, San Francisco, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Maine all worked incredibly hard on pushing their local regulatory and legislative bodies to adopt zero-emission appliance standards and reject hydrogen blending to protect air quality, our health, and the planet.
Fossil Free 4 Health
PSR helped to lead a new coalition called Fossil Free 4 Health, a collaboration of health, health equity, and medical organizations working to expose the fossil fuel industry’s decades of disinformation and harm, dismantle its power and influence, and enact policies to end fossil fuel use and extraction and support energy justice.
PSR helped to coordinate the group’s first grant, which produced analyses of both the legal feasibility of regulating fossil fuel advertising and the media landscape of how fossil fuel health impacts are discussing in both traditional and digital media.
The group plans to seek funding to pursue pilot counter marketing campaigns across the country with a focus on the impact of the fossil fuel industry on health.
Next Generation Climate & Health Ambassadors
Over the course of 2024, PSR National hosted and graduated nearly 40 young health professionals and health professional students through our Next Generation Climate & Health Ambassador program.
Next Generation Climate & Health Ambassadors received trainings on a wide ranges of topics, including: the intersectionality of climate change; reflections on environmental justice from a panel of EJ activists; the health harms of gas stoves; the health and climate implications of artificial intelligence; climate change and nuclear weapons; and how to write a letter to the editor.
Some Ambassadors engaged in hands-on projects in their schools or communities, or with a PSR chapter. These projects served as vehicles for the Ambassadors to form deeper connections with their community through activities that would benefit not only the community, but the Ambassadors themselves. Some of the projects completed this year include:
- A medical student helped create a planetary health curriculum at her university, and her project is helping other Ambassadors implement climate and health-related curriculum in their schools.
- A medical student planned and held a Climate Change and Health Symposium with an emergency room physician at Brown Medical School.
- An ambassador supported Texas PSR with an ongoing collaboration with the Texas Community Prison Advocates, who work on health threats related to extreme heat exposure in Texas prisons.
- Another ambassador worked with PSR New York to organize a phone banking relay for the NY Heat Act to switch the energy grid to renewable heat for New Yorkers.
Federal Policy
PSR held 34 meetings with Federal decision makers, including Members of Congress, Congressional staff, White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Council on Environmental Quality, and the White House Climate Office.
We joined two new coalitions that are especially important heading into 2025:
- Just Solutions Collective’s working group focused on election scenario planning and next steps for the incoming administration
- Coalition for Sensible Safeguards focused on preserving regulatory frameworks that protect the wellbeing of all Americans
PSR offered an average of two action alerts per month for PSR members. Our members and supporters submitted over 10,000 comments to D.C. decision makers!
We submitted four comments to federal agencies, two Outside Witness Testimonies to Congress, and signed onto just under 100 letters with allies.
Several of the rulemakings we worked on in 2023 were finalized this year, such as EPA’s carbon rule regulating power plants, emissions standard for cars and trucks, and HUD’s energy efficiency rule.