Kristi White: Bringing Clinical Health Psychologists into the Discourse on Environmental Justice

Introduction

One of the most impactful ideas in environmental justice that we’ve learned is that the hard work is integration and transformation. Dr. Kristi White showed us how she does the work of centering environmental justice in her field that asks what people need to be well. As a clinical health psychologist for Hennepin Healthcare, a network of hospitals and clinics for the residents of Hennepin County, Dr. White’s work is to see patients in two primary care clinics. She specializes in health psychology and behavioral medicine with an interest in how they connect to issues of climate change and environmental justice. In the hour or so that we had with Dr. White, we talked about her work and what it means to be advocating for sustainability, health equity, and environmental justice as a health practitioner who sees patients every day, as well as the very real implications that a changing climate and environmental injustice can have on our mental health. Throughout the interview Dr. White brought forward a perspective that we don’t often get the chance to hear at Macalester, on-the-ground insights of how we can pursue genuine health in increasingly uncertain times. 

Environmentalism and Psychology

Dr. White went to graduate school for health psychology. In these fields she approached behavioral changes and managing chronic illnesses. Dr. White defines Environmental Justice as everyone getting an equal shot at benefitting from sustainable and equitable practices including protection from environmental hazards, as well as ensuring that our society does not perpetuate racist systems in environmental work.Her main focus was on researching the psychological and physiological effects of stress. Because climate change has been created by human behavior, Dr. White explained to us that psychologists have an important position in approaching the subject of environmentalism and climate change. Dr. White began her work trying to connect the fields of Health Psychology and Environmental Justice. Over the years, interest has continued to grow among researchers and psychologists in the  interdisciplinary exploration of health behavior and environmental sustainability. Dr. White defines Environmental Justice as everyone getting an equal shot at benefitting from sustainable and equitable practices including protection from environmental hazards, as well as ensuring that our society does not perpetuate racist systems in environmental work.

Research

Dr. White’s background is in stress research, focusing on the impacts that external stressors have on our overall health as well as health impacts of making effective changes to our behaviors and habits. An environmentalist at heart, Dr. White explained how she began integrating the known stress of climate change, environmental degradation, and environmental justice in her work. She describes that intuitively, climate change is driven by human behavior and has an impact on human health. Expanding her focus on health psychology and environmental sustainability, Dr. White wrote her dissertation investigating the restorative effects of natural environments on recovery from stressful experiences and the implications for the practice of including aspects of nature in recovery settings. This would later deeply root her work as a health psychologist committed to advancing sustainability and environmental justice in the healthcare setting.

Climate, Environmental Justice, and Mental Health

When we asked Dr. White what impacts that climate change and environmental justice have on mental health, we were fascinated to hear how so many facets of environmental justice, many of which we’ve studied in class, have serious health implications that she engages on a daily basis. Climate change is an ongoing crisis that can precipitate trauma and PTSD caused by disasters and hazards.One of the most curious external issues that Dr. White works on is simply bringing clinical health psychologists into the discourse on environmental justice, where evidently, there is so much to learn and contribute. From her perspective in psychology, she described her definition of environmental justice as both the equitable access to environmental benefits and the equitable protection from toxins and chemicals. Both sides have serious and significant implications for our mental health, but have traditionally been absent from the field of psychology. Some of the major connections Dr. White explained were between trauma and resilience, the implications of systemic and institutional racism and other marginalities, and wellness. Climate change is an ongoing crisis that can precipitate trauma and PTSD caused by disasters and hazards. Often underlying hazards is the systemic and inequitable distribution of environmental goods and bads, for which Dr. White cited the impact of toxins in predominantly poor and BIPOC communities as well as the systematic denial of green space access to BIPOC communities through residential segregation. The conditions, which we often interpret to be unjust can often have serious implications on communities’ mental health. Lastly, Dr. White shared with us her work to advocate for education and practice around the psychological toll of environmental inequities and climate change in her field.

Sustainability Transitions in Health

As we look forward, the psychology field is growing and becoming more committed to investing in the effects of climate change as it relates to health and behavior. The American Psychological Association recently declared climate as a more focal point of their work. Dr. White is involved in a committee at HCMC on climate change and health. They are working on understanding how to train people to address climate change as a public health issue. One area of focus they have is to educate the workforce and community on adaptation and mitigation behaviors that will improve physical health and environmental health. Dr. White says it is most important to focus on what she calls “high currency interventions” that have both human and climate benefits. Some of these interventions include changes to dietary habits such as eating less red meat, community gardening, and creating more green spaces. These interventions can help communities support themselves while also working to support the environment.

Dr. White discussed how many levels of intervention an example like community gardening has. The process of gardening can support a community in learning how to grow food, what foods are native to their local area, produce fresh and healthy food for their community and create a green space locally. Dr. White went on to express the conflicts she has run into with white superiority mindsets, resource appropriation, and gentrification when supporting historically marginalized communities set up these interventions. She told us a story of white women who saw a community garden and wanted to be able to use the fresh produce that was not intended for them. Dr. White expressed it is important to understand how specific communities need these interventions, and it is very easy for the superiority mindset that many white people have to gentrify and steal the resources and healthy interventions that other communities are working on together.

Looking Forward

Dr. White told us that through these crises there are many lessons to be learned. In relation to our climate crisis, it is important to acknowledge and allow yourself to feel the despair that often comes with experiencing and thinking about climate change. But, Dr. White emphasized the importance of not getting stuck in that despair but using it as motivation for  bringing yourself to a place of action. When doing environmental justice work, Dr. White also explained that it is crucial to be intentional about whose voices are being centered. She noted that BIPOC communities have been experiencing environmental injustices and creating their own solutions without white people for a long time, and do not need white people to come and save them from climate change. Regarding how environmental justice is related to the crisis of the pandemic, Dr. White noted that we are seeing  the importance of spending time in nature to support resilience and cope with stress. It is important to ensure equitable access to be outside and connect with nature, including the availability of natural spaces and cold winter gear. A success that came from this pandemic is the acceptance of telemedicine as a new way to engage with healthcare. Dr. White says that telemedicine is here to stay and much more accessible to the public especially right now when it allows people to avoid high risk transportation. But in general, relying on transportation is no longer an issue when telemedicine is an option. From an environmental perspective, telemedicine also has benefits by decreasing the number of emissions because people are not driving to their appointments. It is clear from our time speaking with Dr. Kristi White, that the field of health psychology and how it overlaps with environmental justice is growing and changing right in front of our eyes.