This very straightforward slogan is in fact the title of a WHO publication about a European conference on 5 July 2023. The passage it headlines tells us that ‘Each year, across the 53-country WHO European Region, an estimated 1.4 million deaths are linked to environmental risk factors, such as pollution and climate change.’
And yes, many of us reading this, like the European WHO experts convening for that July conference, will be acutely aware of the impacts of the environment on the health of both human and non-human lives.
Yet still we, committed as we are to health promotion, sometimes fail to challenge public commentary on the environment which focuses solely on the ‘inconvenience’ or ‘cost’ of possible change – as though there is no costs to permitting things to stay as they are (and even though ‘things’ are thereby likely to get irreversibly worse).
A small but telling example of this public lack of understanding is the huge fuss about ULEZ, the vehicle emissions zone in London. 95% of vehicles seen driving in London on an average day in 2023 met the ULEZ emission standards, up from just 39% in 2017; and as reported the evidence that clean air helps prevent not ‘only’ children’s asthma but also seniors’ dementia continues to grow.
But this good news for all of us, in London or not, is largely lost in the media, as is the wider, international news that environmental improvements can reduce noncommunicable diseases, including ischaemic heart disease, chronic respiratory diseases and cancers as well as respiratory infections and stroke.
So what can be done? The WHO Global Health Observatory (2025) provides much data which can be utilized to inform policy and, critically, public debate. On a smaller scale, as just one of many possible examples, Cambridge Public Health has provided analysis of environmental health and wellness in older people. As they insist: ‘what is good for the environment is good for health.’ But so often the message is lost, whether it addresses clean air, climate change, healthy homes or nutrition.
Maybe it falls to us, as health promotion and education professionals, to find ways fearlessly to get that message out to everyone as loudly, clearly and frequently as possible?
Hilary Burrage (trustee) January 2025