By Matt Skoufalos
Reed Omary is the Carol D. & Henry P. Pendergrass Professor, Department of Radiologic Sciences Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Vanderbilt University Medical Center & School of Medicine. He has always been drawn to origin stories. Whether it’s the cosmic birth of the human species or the seeds of an idea, Omary is interested in the throughlines that connect those notions from the past to the present.
Working in a university setting, he is immersed daily in an academic environment; yet it was during the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, and the quarantines that followed, that Omary found the opportunity to contemplate the ideas that would influence the next phase of his career.
As he watched the pandemic lay bare so many fundamental social inequities in America and across the planet, Omary was struck by the notion that the work of healthcare is deeply connected to many other fields of experience, but seldom regards itself in that fashion.
During the pandemic, “Health questions dominated all aspects of society, but these questions nominally didn’t fit into our purview as health systems,” he said. “When do our kids go back to school? When can they go back to sports? Is it safe for my mother-in-law, who’s in her late 80s, to go shopping?
“The questions that society had of us weren’t directly ‘Take care of me, I’m sick,’” Omary said, “they were, ‘How do I run my life?’ And the actions of individuals in one part of the world affected the common good in another.”
“That’s when I realized that we in health care actually needed to address societal issues outside of the geographic borders of our health systems,” he said.
Following the same train of thought, Omary realized that the problems that the pandemic had revealed were even more pronounced in the context of the global underlying issue of climate change. If COVID-19 was the public health crisis that altered the course of every other political issue, climate change was the political crisis that altered the course of every other public health issue.
“COVID was an amazing laboratory to test what worked and what didn’t, but climate is exponentially harder to address than COVID,” Omary said. “And we’re not talking only about effects that we might face ourselves. Our children are going to be the beneficiaries or the victims of the actions that we all take collectively today.”
“I came to understand an important concept,” he said. “The decisions that we make as one individual may not matter, but collectively, they add up, and these decisions can be really helpful, or destructive.”
Omary “spent about a year in stealth mode,” just reading up on climate change, and organizing his thoughts, sharing his approach only with a few close friends.
“Most of them told me, ‘I don’t understand why a radiologist is interested in climate change,’” he said. “So I then vowed I was going on a mission to raise awareness about climate change, and to help foster research and educational programs in this area.”
In the two years that followed, Omary leveraged professional opportunities to bring his message to the forefront of issues in the imaging community. He spoke about the intersection of climate change and radiology on grand rounds. As the president-elect of AUR, the Association of University Radiologists, Omary shepherded a theme of sustainability in radiology for its 2022 annual meeting; he did the same as the president-elect of SCARD, the Society of Chairs of Academic Radiology Departments. And at the end of 2023, Omary stepped away from his academic position to embark on a sabbatical studying the impact of climate change on health care.
“I wanted to help take all of health care, and not just radiology, into a greener future,” he said. “I found that if I wanted to take this to the next level, I couldn’t do it as a side hustle.”
In the course of his research, Omary has connected with as diverse a group of people as he can meet — CEOs, chefs, politicians, poets, students, scientists — from across the world, trying to understand the biggest needs in transitioning health care to a more sustainable future by cutting waste and reducing carbon emissions.
“A number of learns rise right to the top,” he said. “One is that we have to address climate together. Radiology can’t do it just in radiology; a hospital can’t do it alone. Universities can’t do it alone, industry can’t do it alone, government can’t do it alone. Climate change is a collective problem that requires collective solutions.”
To underscore his position, Omary points to the impact of global-scale climate-change effects on parts of the world that are not typically understood to be interconnected. When air quality across North America was dramatically worsened by wildfires in the Canadian boreal forests last year, it triggered his daughter’s asthma in Tennessee — parts of which also have experienced record snowfalls in recent years for a Southeastern state. Moreover, these impacts are accelerated by human behavior, particularly the actions of global industries such as health care, and are not evenly distributed among communities with the resources and resolve to withstand them.
“Addressing equity should include a climate lens, and I think any climate solution should include an equity lens,” Omary said. “When I’m invited to speak, I frequently share how equity and climate change are interrelated.”
“When we look at health outcomes of individuals in the United States, the number one predictor of life expectancy is ZIP code. How do we as physicians, scientists, nurses, or radiology techs contribute to the emissions and the environmental waste that our health systems are spewing out? Let’s recognize that this pollution unfairly targets the communities that are least able to tolerate it,” he says.
In addressing these challenges, Omary is focused on forming partnerships among health care professionals and leadership in various industries, as well as shaping the framework for those conversations by intentionally using language that reduces partisan politics.
“The way to reduce our partisan divide is to avoid words or phrases that tie us to one ideology or another,” Omary said. “I like to use the words ‘planet,’ ‘planetary health,’ ‘human health’. As a physician, these words emphasize our shared purpose to improve health and patient care. Instead of fighting against climate change, we’re fighting for health. It’s a subtle change that can lead audiences to become more receptive to our message.”
Ideally, Omary said, he would like to work “at the intersection of health and sustainability,” helping re-energize health care workforces by “developing the skills that will allow them to contribute to improving the health of the planet as they improve the health of patients.”
“I see the health care workforce as a future flywheel for sustainability,” he said. “Let’s open the gates in health care to those who also care about our planet. The younger generation understands the importance of taking care of our planet. Through our workforce, we have so much opportunity that, if harnessed correctly, could provide immense benefit. At the same time, if health systems view sustainability as just another learning module to be foisted on all, it will be extremely counterproductive. We need to choose our actions wisely.”
You can read more about Omary’s perspective in his blog, “The Green Leap,” at reedomary.com.
