Green Space and Mental Health
The Planetary Health Report Card: A Student-led Advocacy Tool
Water and Health
Multisolving: Climate Solutions That Improve Health and Equity
How Professionals Can Help
Youth Mental Health & Climate Change
The symposium will offer an expansive view of health and sustainability, posing questions and connections meant to inspire and interrogate ideas about what it means to cultivate a community committed to supporting health, well-being, and sustainability for all. Scientists, philosophers, and other speakers will raise and provide perspectives on critical questions including: How does the climate crisis impact human and planetary health, especially among the most vulnerable populations? What are some of the perspectives, ideas, and solutions we need to ensure health, well-being, and sustainability for all, now and into the future?
Featuring:
Suellen Breaky, Ph.D., RN, is Director of the Center for Climate Change, Climate Justice, and Health and a Distinguished Teaching Associate Professor in the School of Nursing at MGH Institute of Health Professions. She teaches in the Doctor of Nursing Practice and accelerated BSN programs. Her clinical background includes cardiac surgery, critical care, hospice care, and global health nursing. For over 10 years, she was a leader with Team Heart, a nonprofit organization that provides RHD screening, cardiac surgical care and follow-up, and patient/provider education in Rwanda. Her scholarship interests include the impact of climate change on human health and well-being, bioethics, and global health ethics. Dr. Breakey is a co-author of Global Nursing in the 21st Century, which was published in 2015. She co-chaired the National League for Nursing’s 2022 Vision Statement on Climate Change and Health. Dr. Breakey has published widely and presented locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally.
Susan Clayton, Ph.D., is the Whitmore-Williams Professor and Chair of Psychology at the College of Wooster in Ohio. Dr. Clayton’s research examines people’s relationship with the natural environment, how it is socially constructed, and how climate change affects mental health and well-being. She is author or editor of six books, including Identity and the Natural Environment, Conservation Psychology, and Psychology and Climate Change, and is currently the editor of the Cambridge Elements series in Applied Social Psychology. A fellow of the American Psychological Association and the International Association of Applied Psychology, she was a lead author on the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Stacia Clinton, RDN., LDN., is Senior Project Lead at Health Care Without Harm. Inspired by the role of food and health as a social and cultural connector and powerful change agent, Stacia trained as a Registered Dietitian, leading the provision of food and clinical nutrition care in small and large scale health care facilities. Disenfranchised by the fragmented state of our health system and driven by an awareness of systemic injustice, she joined Health Care Without Harm where over the past 16 years she has served in leadership directing programs at the intersection of human and environmental health to ignite the health sector mission to First Do No Harm.
Grace Kaseke Kindeke is NH Program Coordinator, American Friends Service Committee, an artist, activist, and a B.A. student of Africana Studies and Sociology at UMASS Boston. She is an avid reader, a passionate speaker and fierce advocate for justice, healing and liberation, grounding her work in a Black feminist, African-futurist and anti-oppression practice. She is the recipient the 2017 MIT Infinite Mile Award for Community Building, the 2022 NAACP Youth Excellence in Service award, and the 2023 NH Martin Luther King award. She was born in the Democratic Republic of Congo and raised in New Hampshire where she currently lives with her family.
Anthony S. Poore, President/CEO, New Hampshire Center for Justice & Equity, has worked in support of transformative systems change and equitable and sustainable communities for more than 33 years as a community organizer and economic development practitioner, academic, workforce housing and public health advocate, policy analyst, researcher and executive. Prior to the launch of the NH Center for Justice & Equity in 2022, Anthony managed AP Consulting Group, working with traditional and non-traditional financial institutions and community-based organizations helping support public-private community economic development projects. From 2018 to 2021, Poore served as the Executive Director of New Hampshire Humanities, an affiliated organization of the National Endowment for the Humanities. From 2010 – 2018, Poore worked with the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, in a variety of leadership roles, directing research and policy initiatives of the Boston Fed’s Regional and Community Outreach Department. Prior to that, Poore served as the Assistant Dean for Southern New Hampshire University’s School of Economic Development. He currently serves on the Board of Directors for the New Hampshire Housing Finance Authority, and Walden Mutual Bank.
Kurt Yuengling, Community Engagement Specialist, New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services, started with the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services’ (NHDES) Environmental Health Program in November 2023 in a new Community Engagement position. He works with the NHDES Technical Services team working on climate action planning under the EPA Climate Pollution Reduction Grants (CPRG) program. Prior, Kurt taught earth and environmental sciences at community colleges in Michigan and Arizona, worked as a geologist in Alaska and New Hampshire, and worked in wetlands and stormwater compliance programs at the NHDES and the State of Maine’s Department of Environmental Protection. He received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in geological sciences from the State University of NY at Geneseo and the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
