Creative and cultural advocacy: Highlighting the health impacts of climate change

“It's indisputable that we are heading into a really dangerous future, but we have a choice about where we're going and what that future looks like.”

That was the message from the Wellcome Trust’s Director of Climate & Health, Dr. Alan Dangour, at a recent Page networking lunch hosted by the Trust. Through a series of talks, the Wellcome team delivered a sometimes confronting overview of the health challenges driven by climate change and the communications challenges of building salience around the issue.

Opening the session, Dangour explored the need to tackle the health impacts of climate change, what will happen if we don't do anything and what we can do about it.

He pointed to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2023 report, which highlights the threat of climate change to human well-being and planetary health, and that the choices and actions implemented in this decade will have impacts now and for thousands of years. “There is an urgency to this, which makes it absolutely essential that we act,” Dangour warned.

However, research has shown that 2023 was a record year for both fossil fuel and renewable energy use, he added, emphasising that “we are not driving the changes that we need in the behaviour of people and the behaviour of governments”. 

The result of this, Dangour said, would be increased extreme heat, more infectious disease risk and surging food prices.

A pressing need for advocacy

“We need to have a huge advocacy effort to drive a greater understanding of these impacts, so that people actually understand this and then have some agency to act because they recognise how important it is,” he explained. 

“Then the other advocacy effort, which we at The Wellcome Trust are spending a lot of time and effort on, is getting this evidence into those national and global climate policies. We believe that climate policies that have health evidence in them are better, they are fairer, they are more equitable, and they will drive better health outcomes for all of us.”

One of the figures driving that advocacy effort at The Wellcome Trust is Sian Bird, the institution's head of Campaigns and Cultural Partnerships in the Corporate Affairs department.

Bird emphasised to communications leaders at the session the “really urgent need for us to increase the prominence of climate and health” and bring it up the policymaking agenda.

“Decision-makers are operating in a really saturated political and media landscape. Moments like COP, which are critically important for making advances, are actually very noisy environments, where it's really difficult to get any cut through on these critical issues,” she said.

Positivity has impact

Bird told attendees that positive, solutions-focused communication was the most effective way to gain traction in the field. “It's really clear that we need to attract attention, but we need to do it in fresh, new ways that win not only the minds of decision-makers but also hearts,” she said.

A new form of engagement is emerging that harnesses this school of thought, according to Bird. Creative and cultural advocacy unites the disciplines of campaigning, culture and entertainment.

“It gives us a real opportunity to cut through this noise, to do that emotional connection piece, to reframe issues and explore them more from different angles and points of view to build understanding and to deliver those quantifiable, strategic changes that we need around saliency,” Bird explained.

There are three target stakeholder groups for creative and cultural advocacy: the creative and cultural sector itself – to raise the profile of the research; selected public groups – to increase awareness of the issues; and decision-makers – to build political will. 

As an example of advocacy that effectively reaches all three intended audiences, Bird cited the ITV drama Mr. Bates vs The Post Office, which spotlighted the Horizon scandal and led to meaningful political action. “It created that deep emotional connection with the public, and it was beautifully timed to build that public support so that there was political motivation to act within those formal judicial processes, resulting in those very hard outcomes around legislation, compensation and criminal investigation.”

Looking ahead, Bird said The Wellcome Trust will be collaborating with the BBC on a campaign focused on this summer’s sporting events. The Trust has surveyed some of the UK’s grassroots sportspeople and elite athletes taking part, to determine how climate change is affecting their health and training.