Our Work — MGH SPEAR MED

What We Do

Health and economies are ecological phenomena. Climate change fundamentally threatens the foundations of health and wealth. Humans are a narrative-driven species. Doctors are the storytellers of science, and we strive to inspire hope. The Earth and its people need a good doctor.

MGH is the original Harvard teaching hospital, our Fellowship is the oldest functioning program in the country, and our Division of Wilderness Medicine is the first of its kind in the world. While we have deep roots in powerful institutions, we seek to subvert the status quo.

Wilderness medicine expedition of doctors riding in a canoe down a remote river

“Doom scenarios, even though they might be true, are not politically or psychologically effective. The first step … is to make us love the world rather than to make us fear for the end of the world.”

— Gary Snyder, MGH Wilderness Medicine Poet Laureate

Current projects range from contributing to leadership in Alaska Native health, Arctic climate change policy, acting as expedition physicians to safeguard climate scientists in high Arctic field sites, studying the effects of low oxygen states on human health in the Everest Base Camp region, and creating and training the first generation of space medicine experts.

We are very closely involved with the Arctic Initiative and the Woodwell Climate Research Center in exploring the intersection between climate change, health, and the arctic as an accelerated model for these changes.

MGH SPEAR MED physicians trained in wilderness medicine and space medicine will not only become experts in providing resource-limited care, but also scholars and advocates striving to push the leading edge of healthcare and its relationship with the environment and climate change, exploration of our universe, and the preservation of wildness.