Student Engagement

“The Planetary Health Report Card: A Student-Led Institutional Advocacy Tool”

Karly Hampshire is a fourth year medical student at the University of California San Francisco applying to residency in internal medicine. She founded the Planetary Health Report Card Initiative in 2019, and served as the initiative's co-director until this summer, when she pivoted into the role of partnerships chair. Karly is also the Curriculum Chair for Medical Students for a Sustainable Future, a lead of the Climate Resources for Health Education Initiative, a current Switzer fellow, and a member of the National Academy of Medicine Action Collaborative on Decarbonizing the US Health Sector.

Jessinta Palack, medical student at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth and member, Board of Directors, NH HWCA will be introducing the speaker and moderating the Q & A.

This event is co-sponsored by the NH Medical Society, NH Academy of Family Physicians, NH Public Health Association, NH Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, Geisel Chapter of the Medical Students for a Sustainable Future Geisel Chapter, and Dartmouth College’s Climate Health Alliance.

Maia Madison, Undergraduate Volunteer Coordinator

Maia Madison is a junior (’23) at Dartmouth College majoring in Biology (concentrating in Ecology, Evolution, Environment, and Society) and minoring in chemistry and anthropology. Ever since learning about climate change in a 5th grade science class, Maia has been incredibly passionate about addressing climate change and its impacts on social-ecological systems— from coral reefs, to city streets, to the microbial ecosystems that humans interact with each day. Due to a gastrointestinal illness in high school, she became fascinated by the human microbiome and how populations of bacteria can be influenced by interactions with animals and the environment. Intrigued by this intersection of ecology and health at a molecular level, Maia joined the Kiessling lab at MIT as a high school student intern, where she studied how carbohydrate binding proteins influence communities of bacteria in the gut. Later, Maia’s interest in treating infectious diseases led her to join Dr. Jiwon Lee’s immunoengineering Lab at the Dartmouth's Thayer School of Engineering in 2019. She is currently a Mellam Family Foundation Research Award student scientist in the Lee Lab, where she engineers immunogens to characterize and focus human immune responses to infectious diseases. Initially interested in the intersection between infectious disease and climate change, Maia recently founded the Student Climate Health Alliance at Dartmouth to unite a community of students from varying backgrounds who are passionate about and interested in learning about climate change and health. Maia hopes to help connect a community of concerned young people across the state to organizations like NH HWCA.

Jessinta Palack, BS, medical student, Board of Directors

Though I grew up in Virginia, I moved to Hanover, NH to begin medical school at Dartmouth this past year. I initially became interested in the effects of our changing climate and human health through my undergraduate coursework at The College of William and Mary. After graduating from W&M in 2019 with a B.S. in Biology, I joined the US Peace Corps and served as an Education Volunteer in the arid, semi-desert region of Singida, Tanzania, where I taught biology and physics to secondary school students. During my service as a Peace Corps volunteer, I felt closely connected to my environment. I caught all the water I used from the rain, relied entirely on solar energy to power my house, and ate locally grown produce and freshly killed meat every day. As our climate continues to change, severe weather events, exacerbations of cardiovascular disease, increasing habitat ranges for disease carrying vectors, and food and water insecurity are just a few challenges which will test our medical system. I’m excited to work with NH Healthcare Workers for Climate Action to better educate and prepare our communities for the health effects of a changing climate, and to share my passion for sustainable and mindful living.

Sage E. Palmedo, BS, medical student, Board of Directors

Sage Palmedo is a first-year medical student with a passion for ecology and interconnected perspectives in healing. When Sage was growing up in Portland, OR, she played with worms and insects in her backyard and learned how to compost. Sage’s relationship with the Earth was strengthened in college, where she was a manager of the student-run vegetable garden, leading multiple loving-kindness meditations there. She was also the lead coordinator of a sustainable living-learning community, cooking communal vegetarian meals with locally sourced ingredients (and with love!). Through her major in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, Sage traveled to the Panamanian rainforests and reefs to study leaf cutter ants, marine polychaete worms, and endophytic fungi—and was fortunate to contribute to a paper in the American Journal of Botany (Christian et al., 2020). In medical school and beyond, Sage will deepen her roots in New Hampshire and work to broaden the scope of what it means to be a healer—envisioning our patient as the collective body of Earth.