Event Details

Climate change threatens the health of all Australians: without adaptation many areas may become unliveable, in particular the tropical north. The Northern Territory health workforce is already under colliding operational pressures exacerbated by extreme weather events, regional staff shortages and infrastructure that is poorly adapted to climate change. The innovation of this project is to seek to make NT Health a leader in both climate-responsive health infrastructure and workforce wellbeing in our climate-altered future.

The H3 Project mobilizes the health workforce, climate researchers and broader community in recognition that meaningful and timely climate action requires both organization-led and grassroots engagement. The project recruits campus greening volunteers and sustainability champions and promotes the wellbeing benefits of regularly engaging with green spaces to alleviate the hardship associated with delivering and receiving hospital-based care and accelerate adaptation to climate change.

We implement low-cost biophilic design within the constraints of legacy infrastructure, creating cool and restorative outdoor spaces to incentivize active mobility while mitigating the impacts of heat on campus users. The project’s participatory components helps combat eco-anxiety and environmental generational amnesia. We highlight our collaboration with Indigenous healers and plant experts in recognition of the synergy between biophilia and Aboriginal people’s enduring connectedness to land, while seeking to improve hospital outcomes for Indigenous patients who are both disproportionately represented in hospitals and disconnected from country.

The Key take away points:

• Providing biophilic spaces in healthcare campuses improves the physical and psychological wellbeing of staff and patients.
• Biophilic encounters enhance contemplation of a reciprocal nurturing relationship with nature, which helps to frame the origins and solutions to global warming and environmental collapse.
• Native planting improves local biodiversity and provides Indigenous patients with a connection country during healthcare-associated separations.