Climate change and mental health: How to create healthier minds & a safer climate

Speakers

• Dr Neil Jennings

  Partnership Development Manager, Grantham Institute, Imperial College London

  United Kingdom

• Dr Emma Lawrance

  Lead Policy Fellow for Mental Health, Institute of Global Health Innovation, Imperial College London

  United Kingdom

• Dr Neil Jennings, Neil has a specific interest in the co-benefits of climate action – how tackling climate change can help create a cleaner, greener, fairer future. Neil is particularly interested in local level climate action and sits on climate-related advisory groups for Kingston Council, the Blueprint Coalition of local government representatives, researchers, and green groups and the One World Living Programme run by London Councils. Within Imperial, Neil is part of the interdisciplinary Climate Cares team - a group of researchers, designers, policy-makers and educators aiming to understand and support mental health in the current climate and ecological crises. The team published a briefing paper on the impact of climate change on mental health in 2021 that has been covered by news outlets around the world and cited by the World Health Organisation. Previously, Neil worked for the Sustainability team of the National Union of Students (NUS) for six years where he managed the Student Switch Off campaign – an award-winning behaviour change programme that has reached over a million students since it began.

• Dr Emma Lawrance, Dr Emma Lawrance is the Mental Health Lead at the Institute of Global Health Innovation (IGHI), Imperial College London. She leads the Climate Cares program, working with researchers, designers and policy experts to better understand and respond to the deep interconnections between climate change and mental health. Other work focusses on digital mental health, in collaboration with Shout crisis text line, and youth mental health. She completed her MSc and DPhil in computational and clinical neuroscience at the University of Oxford. She also holds a BSc(Hons) in physics and chemistry from Flinders University, and a science communication graduate diploma from the Australian National University. She is the Chair of Trustees and Founder of youth mental health charity It Gets Brighter. She loves spending time in the natural world, particularly her homeland of the Adelaide hills, and on a bike.