Rural medical student from Tasmania’s west coast tackles climate change health threats on a global stage

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A medical student from a struggling mining town on Tasmania’s remote west coast is tackling what she calls the biggest global health threat of this century, climate change.

Between interning in emergency departments and studying, The University of Tasmania student, Alice McGushin, has found time to run workshops in Istanbul, Turkey, for fellow medical students from 15 different countries about mitigating threats to health from climate change.

The 25-year-old said her childhood in the remote town of Queenstown had helped her develop the communication skills needed in her endeavours.

“Growing up in Queenstown I was always really inspired by both of my parents and the community…my mother was really involved in community working on volunteer projects, and my father was the local GP…advocating for the health of the people of the west coast throughout his career,” she said.

Following in her parents footsteps, Ms McGushin is the national student representative for volunteer organisation Doctors for the Environment Australia.

In a region with some of the lowest high school retention rates, highest levels of youth unemployment, and poorest literacy, Ms McGushin’s achievements are an inspiration for other young people.

She said that climate change would exacerbate all existing health threats.

“It will increase our risk of going into conflict and war, it will exacerbate the transmission of communicable diseases, such as malaria and dengue fever, as well as food and water borne diseases like diarrhoea…people don’t recognise that climate change is a health problem,” she said.

The three-day workshop, held in Istanbul in March, involved students from diverse countries including Denmark, Netherlands, Poland, Algeria, Sudan, Tunisia, Lebanon, Kazakhstan, the United Kingdom and Canada.

She said the workshops educated students about the role of medical professionals in taking action on climate change.

“It was incredibly diverse…every person in the room mentioned things they were seeing in their own countries that were as a result of climate change, such as increases in drought, and severity of typhoons, which brought home the message to everyone in the workshop that climate change is real and it’s happening,” she said.

Ms McGushin will continue her work with the International Federation of Medical Associations as a presenter and workshop co-ordinator, with workshops in the Philippines in the middle of 2015.