Doctors tackle climate change

Issue: BCMJ, vol. 52, No. 1, January February 2010, Page 37 News

Senior doctors from around the globe have formed the International Climate and Health Council, an international organization and part of a registered charity, Knowledge into Action. The aim of the Council, which is sponsored by the British Medical Journal, is to mobilize health professionals across the world to take action to limit climate change. Any health professional and any health or health care organization can become a member. 

The Council is working toward the goal of achieving a substantial and rapid reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in order to protect human health and improve social justice around the world. 

By joining the Coun­cil, health professionals worldwide will add their support to achieving a globally binding commitment to reduce carbon emissions within 10 years to a safe limit proposed by the scientific community, implementing a mechanism to ensure that resources are transferred to countries where both living standards and fossil fuel use have been low, and encouraging people everywhere to make low-carbon choices, promoting sustainable development.

The goals developed by the council are based on the belief that climate change is an avoidable threat to health, that low-carbon societies are the next great health advance, that health improvement depends on equity and social justice, and that health needs sustainable development, not old-style carbon-emitting global economic growth. 

To get involved, contact the International Climate and Health Council at climateandhealthcouncil@bmj.com, or sign the Climate and Health Council pledge for urgent government-led international action to protect health by limiting climate change: www.climateandhealth.org/pledge.

. Doctors tackle climate change . BCMJ, Vol. 52, No. 1, January, February, 2010, Page(s) 37 - News.


Above is the information needed to cite this article in your paper or presentation. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) recommends the following citation style, which is the now nearly universally accepted citation style for scientific papers:
Halpern SD, Ubel PA, Caplan AL, Marion DW, Palmer AM, Schiding JK, et al. Solid-organ transplantation in HIV-infected patients. N Engl J Med. 2002;347:284-7.

About the ICMJE and citation styles

The ICMJE is small group of editors of general medical journals who first met informally in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1978 to establish guidelines for the format of manuscripts submitted to their journals. The group became known as the Vancouver Group. Its requirements for manuscripts, including formats for bibliographic references developed by the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), were first published in 1979. The Vancouver Group expanded and evolved into the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), which meets annually. The ICMJE created the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals to help authors and editors create and distribute accurate, clear, easily accessible reports of biomedical studies.

An alternate version of ICMJE style is to additionally list the month an issue number, but since most journals use continuous pagination, the shorter form provides sufficient information to locate the reference. The NLM now lists all authors.

BCMJ standard citation style is a slight modification of the ICMJE/NLM style, as follows:

  • Only the first three authors are listed, followed by "et al."
  • There is no period after the journal name.
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For more information on the ICMJE Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, visit www.icmje.org

BCMJ Guidelines for Authors

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