To identify and report how gender justice is conceptualised and discussed in contemporary health literature in relation to the Triple Planetary Crisis of climate change, pollution and biodiversity loss, with a particular focus on the experiences of women and gender-diverse populations, and the representation of nurses and other healthcare professionals dominated by women.
Scoping review.
Searches were conducted across MEDLINE (Ovid), Scopus, CINHAL, Embase and ProQuest, focusing on studies published from January 1 2000–23 September 2024.
The review was conducted in accordance with the JBI methodology for scoping reviews and reported against the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) guidelines. Data were extracted according to a pre-specified extraction framework, developed a priori, encompassing components of gender justice and intersectionality.
A total of 39 studies were included: 17 (43.6%) qualitative, 17 (43.6%) quantitative and 5 (12.8%) mixed methods. The focus of the studies included gendered experiences of climate change (30.8%), decision-making and governance (20.5%), health and wellbeing (17.9%), women's economic participation (15.4%), cultural and spiritual connections to land (7.7%), and intersectionality and human rights (7.7%). Gender-diverse populations, nurses and other healthcare professions dominated by women were not represented in the literature.
The literature reported that women experienced differentiated exposure to the Triple Planetary Crisis. The underrepresentation of gender diverse people and nurses in recent studies remains a significant barrier to advancing understanding of gender justice. Integrating gender justice into health systems is increasingly important to prevent women from being disproportionately impacted by the Triple Planetary Crisis.
More attention to inclusion of frontline healthcare professionals, including nurses, in governance, policy discussions and leadership roles could strengthen the response to systemic environmental threats.
No patient or public involvement.
To describe nurses' and community-based organization representatives' collaborative strategies for advancing climate justice with communities.
This study used a descriptive, qualitative research design.
Data were gathered from August 2022 to February 2023 with nurses (n = 8) and their community partners (n = 5) in the United States. Community partners were representatives of community-based organizations. Photovoice provided greater context for the thematic analysis of collaborative strategies discussed in semi-structured interviews.
Nurse participants worked in academic or non-profit settings. Nurse-community partnerships addressed corporate pollution and promoted Indigenous sovereignty and multispecies justice. Themes included investigating disease and health events, identifying at-risk populations and connecting them with resources, providing health teaching and counseling, organizing communities and coalitions, and advocating for policy development and enforcement. Self-care supported resilience and well-being in the long struggle for climate justice.
Findings from this study indicated that nurses and their community partners strategize to transition communities away from systems of extraction towards local and regenerative systems that support resilience. Nurses and their community partners recognized the importance of applying an expansive understanding of climate justice, including intersections of pollution and multispecies justice, to promoting planetary health.
Findings from this study support nurse-community collaboration in policy work to advance planetary health. This study also supports nurses' collective action with their community partners to address the effects of white supremacy and colonization. Future research is needed to evaluate the outcomes of nurse-community partnerships for planetary health.
Nurses have called for action on climate justice; however, evidence of effective nursing strategies that advance climate justice is sparse. This study is the first to describe the collaborative strategies nurses implement with community partners to support the transition from injustice to justice in communities most burdened by climate change and industrial pollution.