Physicians’ ethical obligation to ensure communities’ access to safe drinking water has roots in their expertise, social authority, and role as mediators.
Physician advocacy for climate change mitigation is justified by seven criteria including physicians’ efficacy, expertise, public trust, and proximity.
Climate change mitigation reforms of government policy, medical curricula, and health professions organizations should be the focus of physician advocacy.
The adverse health effects of climate change should be the focus of physician advocacy efforts and of conversations between physicians and their patients.
The social institutions of medicine and the state have a complex history of interaction in which doctors have been the originators of political ideals, goals, and social change but equally often have found themselves to be instruments of political authority.