P3.E088: Climate Informed Pediatric Care

Purpose/Objectives: Climate change poses significant risks to children’s health. The American Academy of Pediatrics released an updated policy statement in February 2024 encouraging providers to include counseling on climate and health in routine anticipatory guidance. Though this has been a recommendation since the Academy’s first policy statement in 2007, it is not a widely adopted practice. Our project aims to develop, launch and test a model of practice based systems change that includes materials and education to provide climate informed care.

Design/Methods: Baseline provider surveys and interviews were administered in seven practices, looking at knowledge on climate and health topics, comfort level with discussing this with patients, and perceived barriers to adoption. These results were used to develop a climate informed care toolkit, with a focus on five major climate and health concerns pertinent to our geographic area. A series of educational trainings were conducted at the community practices and toolkit materials were delivered.

Results: The initial provider surveys identified main barriers to implementation, which were time, knowledge on the topic, and perceived politicized nature of the topic. Toolkit materials were tailored to be time efficient and work with existing practice workflows. The toolkit contains patient education smartphrases in the electronic medical record, posters and brochures with QR codes for quick links and short role playing videos with scripts for different clinical scenarios. Education on the effects climate change can have on children’s health was provided during each training session. Information was provided on how to address patient and caregiver pushback.
Post-training surveys indicated the large majority of providers have an understanding of the project goals and are clear on how to use the toolkit items. Most are excited to implement this in their practice.
Initial reports indicate that practices are regularly using the children’s activity books and patient education posters in their offices.

Conclusion/Discussion: To our knowledge we are one of the first health systems to incorporate training on climate informed care. Given the recommendations of the 2024 AAP policy statement, this initiative is timely. Education and materials were delivered to seven statewide pediatric practices with the goal of incorporating conversations on climate change into existing guidance. The impact of this project will be evaluated by tracking toolkit use, monthly clinic champion focus groups, post-training surveys and follow-up provider and patient surveys at the conclusion of the project. Toolkit use will be tracked manually and from extracted medical record data documenting climate education.
Initial results show that the majority of providers are receptive to having these conversations as part of their visits and initial data support regular use of patient education materials.