Around the Table With Climate & Health Champions: "Tell the Story"

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Since 2021, NYAM’s Around the Table series has covered a variety of topics related to health equity – the heart of our mission. This year, the series will focus on and demonstrate the connection between our climate and our health. Each program will bring together climate and health champions to discuss climate justice and equity.

This month our discussion serves as an introduction of the threat posed by climate change and why it is one the largest public health crises we are facing today. Framing the issue through the lens of storytelling is key to increasing awareness among the general population to address the imminent and urgent concerns we are facing.

Dr. Ann Kurth, NYAM President, will be joined by Dr. Ed Maibach, Director of the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University, to discuss how to effectively communicate in order to increase awareness of the health harms associated with climate change. Dr. Kurth will also be joined by Stephen Markley, author of The Deluge, who provides a different perspective showing how to tell the story of the climate crisis, in a way that is powerful, enlightening and hopeful.

A key feature of the program will be a “What can I do?” segment at the end of each discussion. These action items will also be shared with attendees and the public following the event on the Around the Table event page.

Special thanks to the NYAM Advocates for Health Equity for their generous support of our public programming. 

About the Speakers

Edward Maibach, PhD

Dr. Maibach is a distinguished University Professor and Director of Mason’s Center for Climate Change Communication (Mason 4C). Ed co-directs the Climate Change in the American Mind polling project (with Yale’s Anthony Leiserowitz), is principal investigator of Climate Matters—a climate reporting resources program that supports TV weathercasters as local climate educators, and he helps direct the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health—an educational initiative that currently involves 37 national medical societies. 

In 2018, Ed was appointed a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 2020, Ed was awarded the Beck Family Presidential Medal of Excellence in Research and Scholarship—Mason’s top research honor—as well as the Stephen H. Schneider Award for Outstanding Climate Science Communication (with Anthony Leiserowitz). In 2021, Ed was identified by Thompson Reuters as one of the world’s 10 most influential scientists working on climate change. 

Ed earned his PhD in communication science at Stanford University (1990), his MPH at San Diego State University (1983), and his BA at University of California, San Diego (1980). 

Ed previously had the pleasure to serve as Associate Director of the National Cancer Institute, and Worldwide Director of Social Marketing at Porter Novelli. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Global Climate and Health Alliance. 

Stephen Markley 

Stephen Markley is the author of The Deluge. His previous books include the critically acclaimed bestseller Ohio, as well as Publish This Book and Tales of Iceland. He has also written for the Hulu comedy Only Murders in the Building. He is a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop. 

Ann Kurth, PhD, CNM, MPH

Dr. Kurth became President of The New York Academy of Medicine on January 1, 2023, joining NYAM from Yale University, where she was the Dean and Linda Koch Lorimer Professor at Yale School of Nursing and Professor, Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases at Yale School of Public Health.

An epidemiologist (PhD UW, MPH Columbia) and certified nurse-midwife (MSN Yale), Dr. Kurth draws from the perspectives of her STEAM (STEM + arts/humanities) disciplinary training. Dr. Kurth’s research focuses on HIV/reproductive health, and global health system strengthening, in the context of pandemics, climate change and other stresses—all of which have a disproportionate effect on structurally marginalized populations. Her work has been funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIAID, NIMH, NICHD, NIDA), Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, UNAIDS, CDC, HRSA, and others, for studies in the U.S. and internationally, with over $20 million as principal investigator. At Yale Dr. Kurth co-founded the Yale Institute for Global Health, a cross-university research effort. Dr. Kurth has published 237 peer-reviewed articles, chapters, and scholarly monographs and presented at hundreds of scientific conferences and invited talks.

Dr. Kurth is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, where she has been named an Emerging Leader, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing (FAAN) and the American College of Nurse-Midwives (FACNM). She is past chair of the Consortium of Universities for Global Health, the member association of 175+ universities supporting “academic institutions to improve the wellbeing of people and the planet.” She served on the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, which sets prevention and screening guidelines for the United States. Dr. Kurth currently co-chairs the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Board on Global Health and serves on the board of Yale New Haven Hospital.

Your financial support at any level helps us continue our work to build access, share power, and achieve our vision where everyone has the opportunity to live a healthy life. You will have an opportunity to make a donation when you register for the event. 

To view past Around the Table programs and other events, visit our YouTube channel.

Tell the Story speaker background slides