Planetary Pearl of the Month

What do healthcare pensions have to do with climate action?
 

A lot! Canada's largest pension plans (including HOOPP and OMERS) control over $2 trillion in retirement savings. Their capital and influence affect the speed with which we will or won't meet climate targets, and right now these funds continue to invest healthcare workers' hard-earned savings in high risk, high carbon assets. The good news is that your pension fund is beholden to you, and your voice can help move trillions of dollars.
 

Shift: Action for Pension Wealth and Planet Health (Shift) educates and empowers pension fund beneficiaries to engage with their pension fund on the climate crisis. You can use Shift's one-click tool to send a letter directly to your pension fund.
 

The climate crisis is a health crisis, with health workers seeing client populations displaced due to climate disasters, suffering from heat exhaustion during extreme weather events, enduring asthma attacks from wildfire smoke, and contracting vector-borne diseases like Lyme disease. Healthcare workers don't want their retirement savings to come at the expense of a safe and healthy climate - make sure your pension knows how you feel.

PEACH Project Updates

Upcoming PEACH Presentations

Hospital Pharmacy and the Climate Crisis

Date: October 26th, 2022

Time: 5:00pm PT/ 8:00pm ET/ 9:00pm AT
 

Join the Canadian Coalition for Green Health Care, PEACH Health Ontario, and CASCADES as we welcome Dr. Shellyza Moledina Sajwani, for an overview of climate change's relevance to pharmacy. Specifically focusing on tangible objectives that can be completed within a hospital pharmacy setting, using the example of the Ottawa Hospital Pharmacy Environmental Stewardship Committee.

Celebrating our Partnerships

Ontario Nurses for the Environment Interest Group (ONEIG)

Calling all Ontario Nurses…ONEIG wants to inspire YOU to get in on the action! 
 

Big things are happening at ONEIG. The environment interest group for Ontario Nurses is continuing to build their partnerships through webinars, debates, skill share sessions, press conferences, position papers, campaign promotions, and more. There are future plans to attend COP28. 
 

Stay tuned for a future ONEIG x PEACH webinar in the next few months! 

For more information, check out the ONEIG and RNAO websites.

Rob Samulack

Co-chair of ONEIG

rob.samulack@gmail.com

PEACH of the Month

“Giving spotlight to our very own PEACH members”

Today I draw from my experience within the Ontario Nurses for the Environment (Interest Group of the Registered Nurses Association of Ontario). For years, I watched passively as a member of the group while my knowledge of our social-ecological challenges grew as a graduate Public Health student. ONEIG, at the time, was quiet and fairly stretched. 

I took a chance and put my name forward to become one of the executive in 2019. The group and President, Elise Skinner, welcomed me with open arms. I felt a sense of solidarity in our shared love of both people and this living world.
 

This first step led to opportunities to bring our work to the forefront of the organization through member resolutions. We initiated advocacy to protect water and appealed to values of nurses such as equity, integrity, and accountability in a resolution for internal sustainability reporting. With full support of the organization and leadership, the association began annual reporting on the work being done to transform and address ecological crises for the promotion and protection of health. This year, action on climate was a pillar of the provincial election platform of the RNAO. Nurses stand behind the work of our group and understand what is at stake. The world is swiftly changing and momentum has built from all sides, I see greater energy and urgency from our strong parent association to combine efforts with other groups for change. 

Those first steps, that first chance I took, dedicating my time and committing to this group built my confidence, my leadership skills and, more importantly, gave me an opportunity to walk alongside many others advocating for a just and urgent change of course down healing path- to use knowledge I had gained listening to experts, Indigenous knowledge keepers, activists and others as I joined a wave of change that continues to grow.