The reality of climate change came home for Dr. Samantha Ahdoot one summer day in 2011 when her son was 9 years old.
She and her family were living in Charlottesville, where Ahdoot is an assistant professor at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. There was a heat wave. Morning temperatures hovered in the high 80s, and her son had to walk up a steep hill to get to his day camp.
About an hour after he left for camp, she received a call from a nearby emergency room. Her son had collapsed from the heat and needed IV fluids to recover.
“It was after that event that I realized that I had to do something,” she said. “That, as a pediatrician and a mother, this was something that I had to learn about and get involved in.”
Dr. Ahdoot made good on that vow. She is the lead author of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ newly updated policy statement on climate change, which appeared earlier this year. The statement urges pediatricians to talk about climate change to... Read more
