2026 Our Planet, Our Health Convention Agenda

Day 1 – Saturday, February 28

Fuse at Mason Square | 3351 Fairfax Dr, Arlington, VA 22201

Opening Reception (In Person Only)

Day 2 – Sunday, March 1

Fuse at Mason Square and Van Metre Hall | 3351 Fairfax Dr, Arlington, VA 22201

Please note: Virtual attendees will have access to all main-stage sessions in the auditorium. Any session labeled as a “workshop” will only be available to in-person attendees.

Registration and Breakfast

Welcome and Performance by the Quaker Notes

Keynote: Keya Chatterjee

Executive Director, Free DC

Storytelling for Systems Change: Empowering Health Professionals to Lead on Climate and Health

This session highlights three climate champions who will share their stories of self and how they became the advocates they are today. The art of storytelling is featured here, a tool that has the power to inspire and motivate others into climate action.

Moderators: Neelu Tummala and Ashley McClure
Sheetal Khedkar Rao, Assistant Professor of Clinical Medicine in the Department of Academic Internal Medicine, University of Illinois Chicago
Wendy Bernstein, Senior Community Psychiatrist, Wellness Equity Alliance
Nisha Sridhar, Fourth-Year Medical Student, Oregon Health & Science University

Narrative Power Building: Climate & Health Equity Fellowship in Action

Narrative Power Building is a strategic, equity-centered approach that integrates lived experience, evidence, values-based framing, and purpose-driven leadership to shape how problems are defined, how decisions are made, and how resources are allocated across systems. By elevating community voice and the voices of health professionals, centering trust, and grounding action in passion for equity and justice, this approach strengthens policy design, institutional practices, systems change, and implementation outcomes across health, education, and social sectors.

Moderator: Shaneeta Johnson, Fellowship Director, Climate & Health Equity Fellowship
Moderator: Venise Curry, Associate Director, Climate & Health Equity Fellowship
Keisha R. Callins, 2025 Climate & Health Equity Fellow
Audrey Tanksley, 2025 Climate & Health Equity Fellow
Ifeanyi Olele, 2025 Climate & Health Equity Fellow

Break

Unpacking Federal Climate Actions: What Health Professionals Need to Know

This session will explore recent federal actions on climate change across legislative and regulatory fronts, highlighting key developments and their broader implications. Experts will unpack how these federal shifts—ranging from new laws and agency rules to major court decisions—are shaping the national climate agenda. The conversation will also focus on what these changes mean for grassroots advocacy, including emerging opportunities and potential roadblocks. Attendees will gain insights into how local movements can strategically respond and adapt to the evolving federal landscape.

Moderator: Liz Scott, Senior Director of Nationwide Clean Air Advocacy, American Lung Association
Hilda Berganza, Climate Program Manager at Hispanic Access Foundation
Jeremy Symons, Senior Advisor at the Environmental Protection Network
Meredith Hankins, Legal Director, Federal Climate, Climate & Energy, Natural Resources Defense Council

Break

Lunch

Converging Pathways: Lessons from Indigenous and Western Medicine for Advancing Planetary Health

This session will highlight Indigenous healers who bridge traditional and Western medical practice, policy leaders advancing Indigenous sovereignty and environmental justice, and coalitions working to reframe climate migration as an opportunity for welcome and mutual enrichment. It will also feature organizations connecting mobile populations to care and strengthening community-based health systems. Through these narratives, participants will gain insight into how Indigenous perspectives can shape policy, clinical care, and community action in ways that foster equity, resilience, and collective healing. Together, we will explore how these learnings can be integrated into the work of medical professionals to create a more just and sustainable future.

Moderator: Tulsi Modi, Senior Project Manager, Planetary Health Alliance
Marcos Moreno, Attending Physician, Department of Psychiatry at Yale University
Emma Rawson-Te Patu
Allison Kelliher

Sustaining the Mission: Practical Guidance for Small Nonprofits Working on Climate, Health, and Equity (Workshop – In Person Only)

This practical session will provide participants with actionable strategies for sustaining and expanding their funding base. The discussion will explore how to build authentic partnerships with community-based organizations, identify and approach new foundations and donors, and cultivate long-term relationships that align mission, impact, and funding priorities. Designed for organizational leaders, clinicians, and advocates seeking to strengthen the financial resilience of their programs, the session will offer practical tools and real-world insights to help participants successfully secure and steward funding in a challenging philanthropic context.

Lesly Fajardo-Feaux, Champion for Equity and Community Health

Ready, Set, Resilience: Actionable Tools for the Health Sector and Communities (Workshop – In Person Only)

This session will equip participants with knowledge, resources, and tools to strengthen resilience across interconnected levels– public health, health care sector, and community– while highlighting the essential role of health professionals in advancing climate and health equity

Jenny Keroack, Director of Program Strategy & Management, Health Care Without Harm
Winslow Dresser
Jessica Hinshaw

Break

The Health Toll of AI: Data Centers, Dirty Energy, and Environmental Justice

This session will examine how data centers—often promoted as clean, high-tech investments—can place significant strain on local energy grids and water resources, contribute to increased fossil fuel reliance, and disproportionately impact historically overburdened communities. Speakers will share lessons from organizing efforts on a state level, highlighting strategies communities are using to demand transparency, equitable siting practices, and stronger environmental protections.

Abre’ Conner, Director of the Center for Environmental and Climate Justice, NAACP
Karen Campblin
Abby Novinksa-Lois, Executive Director, Healthy Climate Wisconsin

Learners & Leaders: Identifying Strengths and Opportunities for Growth in Planetary Health (Workshop – In Person Only)

Moving from a place of concern to a healthcare climate champion doesn’t happen overnight. These transformations require reflection, education, and strategy. This workshop assists attendees in identifying the strengths they can bring to this important work as well as their growth areas for effective sector leadership. Throughout the session, attendees will hear from leaders from diverse climate and health courses and fellowships to help them assess what programs best fit their personal and professional goals.

Moderator: Cassandra Thiel, President and CEO of Clinically Sustainable Consulting LLC
Keisha R. Callins, 2025 Climate & Health Equity Fellow
Logan Harper, Assistant Director of the Climate and Health Science Policy Fellowship, University of Colorado
Carrie Kovacik, 2025-2026 Fellow, Columbia University Sustainable Healthcare Leadership Institute
Joel Charles

Ensuring Every Voice Counts: Clinician Strategies to Protect Voting as a Social Determinant of Health (Workshop – In Person Only)

This workshop will provide clinicians with an overview of the evolving voting landscape and introduce practical, nonpartisan strategies to help protect access to voting. Participants will learn how healthcare institutions can support civic participation through initiatives such as voter registration programs, partnerships that enable ballot drop-off or voting access at healthcare facilities, and community engagement efforts. The session will combine short didactic presentations with interactive discussion to help attendees assess what is happening in their own states and identify opportunities for meaningful involvement.

Lizet Ocampo, Executive Director, Vot-ER
Laura Williamson, Senior Policy Advisor, Democracy and Voting Rights, Southern Poverty Law Center

Break

Rebuilding Trust and Digital Power in Health Communication

The COVID-19 pandemic laid bare the deep mistrust many communities feel toward institutions, including the health sector. As Planetary Health professionals, how do we reckon with this reality and rebuild trust? This session takes a grounded, critical look at digital messaging, disinformation, and historic harms that have undermined trust, particularly in rural and marginalized communities. Participants will learn from community engagement experts, as well as practicing health professionals who have made a name for themselves on social media, how to find your “voice” and develop credible health messaging in the digital space.

Moderator: Paige Knappenberger, Program Director of the Environment & Health Program, Physicians for Social Responsibility
Shel Winkley, Weather & Climate Engagement Specialist, Climate Central
Sarah Pachtman-Shetty, Maternal Fetal Medicine, Ouma Health
Amanda d’Almeida, Family Medicine Physician and Community Medicine Fellow, UCLA; Co-Founder, Medicine Explained
Monica Ponder

Day 3 – Monday, March 2

Fuse at Mason Square and Van Metre Hall | 3351 Fairfax Dr, Arlington, VA 22201

Please note: Virtual attendees will have access to all main-stage sessions in the auditorium. Any session labeled as a “workshop” will only be available to in-person attendees.

Pre-Convention Walk

Meet in the lobby of the Hilton Arlington (conference hotel)

Breakfast

Local Wins, Global Lessons: Policy and Campaign Strategies That Improve Health by Addressing Climate Drivers

While Washington D.C. grants free reign to polluters and dismantles institutions that protect health, health professionals are pushing back and driving progress at the state and local levels. Health professional allies across the world are driving change in similarly challenging contexts. This session will showcase advocacy wins from across the U.S. and abroad, highlighting strategies that have achieved health and climate wins and meaningfully built popular support for climate action. Participants will explore how these approaches can be adapted across contexts, and how global perspectives can strengthen U.S. advocacy.

Moderator: Zach Williams, Associate Director of the Environment & Health Program, Physicians for Social Responsibility
Martha Dina Argüello, Executive Director, Physicians for Responsibility Los Angeles
Georgia Clinicians for Climate Action

Break

Collective Power in Action: Adapting Proven Social Change Strategies for Climate and Health

In this session, we’ll examine the evidence for traditional forms of activism in achieving climate and health goals, while also exploring emerging strategies from the U.S. and around the world that can help us navigate constrained political environments, safeguard communities, and build the broad public will required for durable, transformative change.

Moderator: Jo Bjorgaard
Milagros R. Elia, Program Manager for Climate and Clean Energy Advocacy, Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments
Joe McCannon, Executive Fellow, Higher Ambition Leadership Alliance
Laura Trouille, Vice President of Science Engagement, Adler Planetarium; Principal Investigator, Zooniverse
Audrey Schreiber

Break

Lunch

Climate Café (optional lunch session led by the Climate Psychology Alliance of North America)

RSVP Required on Cvent. Space is limited. 

A Climate Cafe, as led by CPA-NA, offers an informal, open, respectful, and confidential space to share emotional responses and reactions related to the climate and environmental emergency. It is not designed to lead participants to any conclusion or toward specific action, but instead It provides a quiet, reflective container – a haven from usual busyness and activity- where we can explore our thoughts, feelings and experiences while being in community with like-minded people.

Health in the Hot Zone: Science, Policy, and Partnerships to Reduce Extreme Heat Harms

Extreme heat is a growing public health emergency, disproportionately impacting vulnerable populations such as low-income households, older adults, renters in substandard housing, and heat-exposed workers. Energy insecurity and power shutoffs compound these risks, often leaving communities without safe cooling options during dangerous heat waves. This session, hosted by the Alliance for Heat Resilience and Health, will spotlight state-level policies and community strategies that safeguard residentsfromheat emergencies – focusing on universal access to cooling, emergency protections, and long-term resilience planning. The session will take a deep dive into energy insecurity and vulnerable communities to provide health professionals with concrete, actionable takeaways.

Moderator: Ksenia Benifand
David Konisky, Lynton K. Caldwell Professor and Associate Dean for Research at the O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University, Bloomington
Leo Bachinger
Mark Wolfe
Angella Dunston

Reversing the Table: Youth Leadership and Strategic Organizing for Climate and Health (Workshop – In Person Only)

This workshop intentionally flips the traditional conference dynamic. Youth organizers lead the conversation, sharing how younger generations are organizing, communicating, and driving change in planetary health and often with limited resources but outsized impact. Participants will hear directly from experienced youth leaders, organizers, and creators about what it takes to build grassroots movements, launch and sustain campus or community-based initiatives, and craft messages that resonate across generations.

Moderator: Tulsi Modi, Senior Project Manager, Planetary Health Alliance
Natalie Baker, Medical Student, Harvard Medical School
Madeleine MacGillivray, Climate Justice Program Lead at Seeding Sovereignty
Jennifer Uchendu, Founder, SustyVibes

Global Perspectives on Three Domains: Energy Transition, Land Use, and Legal Approaches (Workshop – In Person Only)

This workshop provides a high-level, global overview of climate change mitigation, adaptation, and policy. Participants will explore major systems shaping climate and health outcomes, including global trends in the energy transition and the economic, political, and technological forces driving it; international efforts to protect land use and biodiversity, including the “30% by 2030” target and the tools used to monitor ecosystems; and emerging legal pathways—such as rights to a healthy environment—that are advancing climate and health action worldwide. Designed to offer an interdisciplinary perspective, the session highlights how global policy, science, and governance are converging to shape the climate and health landscape in the decades ahead.

Moderator: Ann-Christine Duhaime, Nicholas T. Zervas Professor of Neurosurgery at Harvard Medical School
Jeannine Cavender-Bares, Climate Action Acceleration Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University; Director, Harvard University Herbaria
Joseph Aldy, Teresa and John Heinz Professor of the Practice of Environmental Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School
Jeni Miller, Executive Director, Global Climate and Health Alliance

Climate-Informed Occupational Health: Integrating Climate Risks into Workplace Clinical Encounters (Workshop – In Person Only)

This interactive workshop will equip occupational health clinicians and corporate health leaders with practical strategies to integrate climate considerations into everyday workplace clinical encounters without adding burden or requiring specialized climate expertise. Using real-world scenarios drawn from occupational health settings, participants will learn how to recognize climate-related health drivers, ask targeted screening questions, provide evidence-based counseling, and connect individual symptoms to workplace conditions, travel risks, and organizational preparedness. Participants will also learn best practices in communicating about climate change with their patients.

While anchored in occupational health practice, this session is designed for a broad audience, including clinicians embedded in corporate clinics, employer health program leaders, and consultants supporting organizations seeking to build climate-responsive health systems.

Manijeh Berenji, UC Irvine School of Medicine and School of Public Health
David Leathers, Climate Program Director, Health Action Alliance
Harleen Marwah, Primary Care Pediatrician, Mass General Brigham for Children
Leah Topper

Break

From Crisis to Capacity: Strengthening Healthcare for a Climate-Resilient Future

This session will outline the converging challenges facing healthcare: disappearing federal incentives for clean energy and resilience investments, shrinking disaster relief capacity, and rising risks from heat, floods, wildfires, and storms that threaten both operations and community health. At the same time, we will explore opportunities for healthcare organizations to adapt and lead—by strategically leveraging capital investments, forging new partnerships, and building systems that both protect their facilities and extend resilience into the surrounding communities. Participants will leave with a clearer understanding of the shifting policy landscape, the urgent risks on the horizon, and the practical strategies healthcare can employ now to ensure continuity of care and community protection in an era of worsening climate disruption.

Moderator: Jessica Marx, Senior Program Officer, The National Academy of Medicine
Faisal Masud, Mary A. and M. Samuel Daffin, Sr. Centennial Chair in Anesthesia and Critical Care and founding Medical Director of the Center for Critical Care, Houston Methodist Hospital System
Komal Bajaj, Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Albert Einstein College of Medicine
Jerry P. Abraham, Director of Public Health, Integration & Street Medicine, Kedren Community Health Center
Walt Vernon, CEO, Mazzetti

Beyond the Physical: Supporting Emotional Health in the Midst of Climate Disasters (Workshop – In Person Only)

Climate change is driving more frequent and severe extreme weather events such as wildfires, hurricanes, and floods. Beyond the physical damage to individuals and communities, these disasters have profound impacts on the mental health and emotional wellbeing both in the immediate aftermath and over the long term. This workshop will provide health professionals from all disciplines with foundational knowledge of common psychological responses to disasters and introduce practical, evidence-informed tools and resources for supporting survivors. Participants will also learn strategies to care for their own mental health and resilience when responding to climate-fueled disasters.

April Naturale, Traumatic Stress Specialist
Steve Crimando

Unconference Session (Workshop – In Person Only)

Break

Convention Wrap-Up 

Day 4 – Tuesday, March 3 Optional In-Person Visits to Congress

Optional visits to educate decision-makers.

Registration for the visits to Congress is now closed.

Hopkins Bloomberg Center | 555 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20001

Congressional Meetings