Return to the Climate is Health home

How Climate Change Impacts You, Your Health, and Your Community

Getting Started (10-15 min)

Welcome to Session 3 of the “Climate Is Health” series. This week we are focused on personal connections to climate change. Our Guest Speaker is Miho Aida, who is a filmmaker, outdoor adventurer, and educator, as well as the Equity & Inclusion Manager for NatureBridge. 

Key concepts this week include self-reflection, personal narrative, and storytelling.

💡 If you have time, take a moment to reflect before starting with the session and answer the following questions in a notebook:

  1. How did researching the systems that bring you your food, or that keep your town’s residents moving, change how you think about climate change? 
  2. How might climate change be affecting you, or people in your community, in ways that you hadn’t considered?
  3. Have you heard of any stories about an individual inside or outside of your community impacted by climate change or taking action to change the course of climate for our collective health? What resonated with you about those stories? What did not?

Guest Speaker (12 min)

Miho Aida,
NatureBridge

Explore in Depth (10-30 min) 

Climate change is a story－a story about our families and our communities. Find out what climate change looks like for young people around the United States and what they’re doing to take action. 

Climate change is personal no matter your age or background. Read the stories of two women who saw climate change impacting them and why they are fired up to take action.

For more than a decade, the educator and filmmaker has been championing women from marginalized communities who are making a difference in the outdoors.

Miho Aida’s film shares the voices of Gwich’in women, who speak out for their sacred land, the caribou and their way of life. 

A climate story is a personal story about you and your experience of climate change. 

Reflect and Discuss (10-30 min)

    1. What are the ways in which you as an individual are most impacted by climate change? 
    2. How does your daily life and how do your individual decisions impact the climate? 
    3. What climate actions can you take to help curb climate change? 
    4. How can you and your local community take action in response to COVID-19 to rebuild a more sustainable and healthy future? 
    5. What climate story do you want to tell when looking back on your life?

Case Study (30-60 min)


You are your own case study this week. Turn your lens inward and spend time focusing on personal reflection and the action items below outlining your personal narrative and connections with climate change and your health.

Take Action (30-60 min)

  • Complete this sentence: I care about the climate because ________________. Take a photo of yourself holding up a paper with your completed sentence on it and share it with #climateishealth or email a copy of your sentence to harvardclimatesummit@goputney.com. 
  • List out ten ways that you as an individual can positively influence the world’s climate story. Share your top three with your classmates. 
  • Write your personal climate story. This could be focused on observations you have made about climate change in your community, stories about how you are impacted by changing climate, statements about how you influence the changing climate, or a narrative about why you are passionate about climate. For example, if you were going to make a mind map or write a personal narrative but frame it entirely around the ways that your life intersects with/impacts/is impacted by climate change, what would that story be? Record your story in a way that resonates with you: an essay, a poem, a series of photographs, or a short video. Read your story aloud to another person. Ask them to write their own version and share it with you.  Share any parts of your project you’d like to with us by tagging #climateishealth or emailing harvardclimatesummit@goputney.com, and we’ll compile your projects together. 

Connect

Don’t forget to post your ideas and learning journeys on social media with the tag #climateishealth and @HarvardCCHANGE, and email harvardclimatesummit@goputney.com with any questions you have.

Download full content PDF – Climate Is Health – Session 3

Return to the Climate is Health home