Global Climate Change and News of Difference: Collective Action for Planetary Health and Family Health.

Abstract

Sir David Attenborough was the People’s Advocate for the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland. During the opening ceremony, he delivered an inspiring address and call to action for heads of state and listeners around the globe. The data on climate change reflect an undeniably urgent state of the planet and the living creatures that depend on it. Sir Attenborough (2021) called on leaders to recognize that the data on climate change “defines our relationship with our world,” encouraging us all to chart our own story for this relationship moving forward. The people most affected by climate change, he reminded us, are not generations of the future, but young people alive today; this fact alone should inspire hope and a sense of urgency by those in positions of leadership. In an International Family Nursing Association (IFNA, 2020) Position Statement on Planetary Health and Family Health and a series of blogs about planetary health and family health over the past year, we have tried to answer the question: is the health of the planet really relevant to family nursing? For this guest editorial, we reflected on the history of the Journal of Family Nursing and the call to action that it represented to family nursing leaders at its inception. In the journal’s inaugural issue published in February 1995, Janice Bell’s impassioned and generative editorial called for “news of difference” in our views on what matters in family nursing. Bell reflected on the notion of isomorphism, “the suction we fight when it is easiest to simply repeat the pattern of dialogue that maintains more of the same in family nursing” (p. 6). In the second issue of the journal in 1995, Lawrence Ganong’s review of current trends and predictions for family nursing was both honest and hopeful about the direction of our field. At the time, Ganong observed that family nursing was about a decade behind other disciplines in terms of methodology and conceptual concerns. Importantly, Ganong called on family nurses to start recognizing the contexts within which families live, which had largely been ignored. “More attention should be given,” wrote Ganong (1995), “to the impact of natural disasters, such as floods, earthquakes, and hurricanes, on families” (p. 197). Both Bell and Ganong, on a theme resounded by Attenborough, warn of the threat of isomorphism: more of the same is not sustainable. Climate scientists and family nursing leaders have been making this “news of difference” plea for decades, and it is now time that we chart our story as family nurses. Our playbook of the past is no longer acceptable: the future of young families and our children depends on our leadership.