Renee N. Salas is an American medical doctor who is Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine at the Harvard Medical School and the Yerby Fellow at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Salas leads efforts to make physicians and hospitals become more active in their response to climate change.
Early life and education
In 2004, Salas was in the first group of students to be accepted by the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine in its inaugural year. She was awarded a Master's of Science in Clinical Research at Case Western Reserve University. After graduating, Salas joined the University of Cincinnati where she specialised in emergency medicine. Sales started a fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital in 2013. As part of her fellowship she attended a lecture on climate change, where she first heard that climate change would be the next public health emergency. Up until that point she had never considered that climate change would impact her patients. This lecture made her reconsider her career, shifting her research focus to climate change and its impact on public health. She eventually earned a master's degree in public health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Research and career
When asked about the impact of climate change on the medical system, Salas remarked, "...A climate lens must be added to every aspect of our practice. Speaking as an emergency medicine physician, that includes everything from ambulance and triage protocols to the screening tools we use. It also impacts how we treat patients, the discharge instructions we provide, and the follow-up plans". She started to identify evidence of climate change inside her clinic, including heat stress and air pollution problems. During a heat wave in 2018 the power failed at Mount Auburn Hospital, forcing firefighters to move patients from the hot rooms at the top of the building. Despite the clear risks that global warming presents to human health, in a survey conducted by the International Federation of Medical Students' Associations, it was revealed that only 16% of medical schools included climate change on their curriculum. She founded the Society of Academic Emergency Medicinespecial interest group in Climate Change and Health Interest Group. In 2015 Salas was awarded a wilderness medicine fellowship and worked as a physician for the Himalayan Rescue Association in the Everest base camp. She was one of very few medical doctors in the vicinity when the 2016 Imphal earthquake struck Nepal, and worked to save the lives of the Sherpas and adventurers. In 2018 Salas was appointed a Burke Fellow. She was the 2018 US lead for The Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change. In February 2020 Salas started an effort to make clinicians and hospitals to take on a more active role in responding to climate change. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Salas became concerned that the United States was unprepared for both coronavirus disease and climate change. She wrote an opinion article for The BMJ calling for the lessons learned from the pandemic to become a blueprint for the climate crisis.
