“The pandemic is a reminder of the intimate and delicate relationship between people and planet. Any efforts to make our world safer are doomed to fail unless they address the critical interface between people and pathogens, and the existential threat of climate change that is making our earth less habitable.”
Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus
WHO Director-General
In this cross generational catch up on the post COVID world, Roger, Courtney and Omnia are talking about the old normal, and the opportunities within the new normal.
Join in on the discussion in the comments below.
Roger Harris
Roger Harris is a senior staff specialist in the intensive care unit at the Royal North Shore hospital and the Sydney Adventist hospital (SAN). He is dual qualified in Emergency Medicine and Intensive Care. Roger is one of the co-founders of SMACC and Coda. He is passionate about education, his five children and especially his beautiful wife Georgie.
Omnia El Omrani
Omnia El Omrani is a final-year MBBCh medical student from Egypt, currently working at Ain Shams University Hospital in Cairo. She has more than 6 years of experience in global health and student advocacy. She is currently serving as the Liaison Officer for Public Health Issues for the International Federation of Medical Students’ Association, representing the voice of 1.3 million medical students from 129 countries across the world in the advocacy for planetary health, climate change, and non-communicable diseases. She is also the organization’s focal point to the United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC).
Courtney Howard
Courtney Howard is an Emergency Physician in Canada’s subarctic, President of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, Chair of the advocacy subcommittee of the WHO-Civil Society Working Group on Climate Change and Health, is on the Steering Committee for the Planetary Health Alliance and is Policy Coordinator for ClimateCODA. She has led research on menstrual cups and wildfires, was the 2018 International Policy Coordinator for the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change, and has participated in advocacy around divestment, carbon pricing, active transport, plant-rich diets, coal phase-out, hydraulic fracturing, wildfires, and the mental health impacts of climate change. Her mentors in mischievous change-making are her two hilarious daughters, with whom she can frequently be found dancing to indefensible pop music.
