Optimizing health professionals' climate advocacy messages

In the US, health professionals are a highly trusted source of information on climate change. A small but growing set of empirical studies suggest that health professionals who educate audiences about the climate change/human health nexus can build public support for climate policies, an effect seen across much of the political spectrum. Here, in a 2x2 factorial experiment plus a no message control group (n=1007), we tested four versions of a brief fictitious yet realistic news article to answer two questions with regard to six possible communication outcomes (e.g., support for fossil fuels, support for renewable energy, trust in health professionals as sources of climate change information): (1) Are start frames (about the need to use more renewable energy) or stop frames (about the need to phase out fossil fuels) more effective, and (2) Are gain frames (about health benefits) or loss frames (about health harms) more effective? In addition, we surveyed a cohort of health professionals who advocate for climate action (n=806) to test their willingness to use each of these message frames. We found that reading any of the four versions of the news article led to a small increase in trust in health professionals as a source of information on climate change relative to the control group, and the stop/loss and start/gain framed articles led to a small decrease in participants' support for fossil fuels. The health professionals surveyed had a strong preference for gain-framed messages; however, many also mentioned a sense of duty to warn audiences of the health harms of climate change. Overall, these results provide further evidence of the effectiveness of health professionals advocating for a clean energy transition, and suggest there are no major differences between the effectiveness of gain vs. loss frames or start vs. stop frames in climate-health advocacy messages.