ANMF national climate change officer Catelyn Richards. Photo supplied
Members attending this year’s ANMF (Vic Branch) Health and Environmental Sustainability Conference in August will have the chance to meet and ask questions of the Federation’s first ever National Climate Change Officer, Catelyn Richards.
Catelyn can’t wait to join members from across Victoria in person at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre.
‘There’s something different about being in a room with many like-minded people who are all energised, all passionate and all saying: we can do it,’ she enthuses. ‘That is just so important – particularly in this space where there can be days when it’s difficult to find hope.
‘I find hope immediately when I’m surrounded by other people who say: yep, this is worth fighting for,’ she adds. ‘This is worth our time and our energy.’
For Catelyn, ‘this’ is being part of the solution when it comes to mitigating and adapting to climate change. She’s especially passionate about elevating nurses, midwives and carers Australia-wide as leaders in this work. Which is why she’s not afraid to admit that she’s relatively new to climate change activism.
‘I wasn’t always inspired to take action on climate change,’ she says. And even as she became more involved she often experienced imposter syndrome, feeling like maybe she needed to have an environmental degree or a climate health qualification to do the work; that she needed to be an expert.
She quickly learned this wasn’t the case. ‘My experience has been that nobody in the climate and health space feels like they’re an expert! There’s always so much more to learn. But we really can’t wait for everybody to become an expert on climate and health before we take action,’ she adds. ‘Thankfully, much of this work is being done by people who are becoming experts by doing it.’
She notes ‘some phenomenal examples where nurses, midwives and carers have faced every barrier and every challenge, but they just kept going. And because of their work there’s now fantastic initiatives and resources. I love it because it exemplifies nursing and midwifery pragmatism, our resilience and our ability to just get things done.’
Environmental determinants of health
Catelyn didn’t even always want to be a nurse. ‘I had originally wanted to do law,’ she says with a laugh. But while she was working and volunteering in the Solomon Islands she began to feel that she would best be able to serve her community as a nurse.
When she returned to Australia, she completed her Bachelor of Nursing and started working at the Royal Children’s Hospital. It was here that she started noticing a pattern: ‘respiratory cases, acute exacerbation of asthma, children who would often come in weekend after weekend, after exposure to poor-quality air.’
She began to wonder if there wasn’t a better approach than just responding to these cases in her capacity as a registered nurse. ‘I couldn’t ignore it,’ she says. ‘I started to feel that if I wasn’t advocating for systemic change then I was not serving my patients as much as I could be.’
During Victoria’s Black Summer bushfires and heatwaves of 2019 and 2020, Catelyn found it even more difficult ‘to turn a blind eye to these upstream determinants of health, and I realised that we needed to be focusing on these problems that are currently emerging but which will continue to get worse over the coming years. That’s the context in which nurses, midwives and carers will be working, and leading, in the future.’
Catelyn began volunteering with the Climate and Health Alliance, and the Australian College of Nursing’s Emissions Reduction Chapter and Community of Interest. By 2021, she had moved back to her home state of Tasmania to pursue a Master of Leadership in Health and Human Services; she is also a PhD candidate, with her topic exploring planetary health, nursing and health systems policy. In 2021, she co-founded Climate Action Nurses (CAN).
‘CAN was founded on a platform of advocacy, research, education and policy,’ she says, ‘along with leading initiatives that support nurses and midwives in taking action across those pillars.’
One such initiative was the 10-session Nursing on the Front Lines: a free, global course run in partnership with Columbia Mailman School of Public Health’s Global Consortium on Climate and Health Education, the Alliance of Nurses for Health Environments and the Canadian Association of Nurses for the Environment. ‘It attracted about 2000 attendees,’ Catelyn says, ‘which was so great!’
These experiences opened Catelyn’s eyes ‘to understanding just how much of an impact we can have’. So when she saw the ANMF Climate Change Officer role advertised, she jumped at the chance. ‘I thought: this is fantastic – we so need a national overarching position that can link the incredible nurses, midwives and carers we have doing state-based work so that we can curate a national response.’
Catelyn’s vision for the role is to make it easier for nurses, midwives and carers to see themselves as leaders in the climate and health response. ‘For me, that looks like creating clear communication channels, clear pathways where we can collaborate with and learn from each other,’ she explains. ‘So I’m aiming to create a platform where nurses, midwives and carers can do what they do best and collaborate on these projects that will have these national outcomes.’
Another vital aspect of the role, she says, ‘will be in influencing policy, and in looking for opportunities where nurses and midwives can also be part of the conversation. I see that being key: elevating and amplifying nursing, midwifery and caring voices in climate and health.’
The ANMF (Vic Branch) Health and Environmental Sustainability Conference is on Thursday 28 August at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre. It attracts 7 hours CPD for nurses and midwives.
