Aaron Bernstein

Interim Director, Center for Climate, Health, & Global Environment, Harvard

Aaron Bernstein focuses on the health impacts of the climate crisis on children’s health and advancing solutions to address its causes to improve the health and wellbeing of children around the world. He is the Interim Director of The Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (Harvard C-CHANGE), a pediatrician at Boston Children’s Hospital, and an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School.

In 2019, Bernstein testified before Congress on the child health impacts of climate change, drawing from his personal experience as a pediatrician having to treat children with breathing difficulties, vector-borne diseases, and trauma from natural disasters. He leads Climate MD, a Harvard C-CHANGE program to encourage physicians to transform climate change from an issue dominated by politics and concerns about the future or faraway places, to one that matters to every person’s health here and now. 

Bernstein serves on the American Academy of Pediatrics Council on Environmental Health Executive Committee, is chair of the board of directors at the U.S. Green Building Council, and is on the board of advisors at Parents Magazine as an environmental health specialist.

After receiving his bachelor’s degree in human biology from Stanford University, Bernstein received graduate degrees in medicine (MD) and public health (MPH), from the University of Chicago and Harvard University, respectively. An avid bicyclist, Dr. Bernstein pedals to and from work year-round.

Recordings

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Climate One TV: Covid19 and Climate

August 24, 2020 Why does an invisible, life-threatening virus prompt a nationwide emergency, but invisible, life-threatening gases don’t? Experts have been...
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