July 3, 2026

by Dr. Plastic Picker

The blog traffic has definitely shot up since the KPBS interview with Tammy Murga. (Hi Tammy!). I’m sure she is busy doing other stories about environmental health. That’s the thing about the current climate crisis and environmental pollution, it’s endless and the super interesting honestly so there are so many stories, so many characters, and so many opportunities to make a difference.

I gave a talk two days ago at work, and honestly it was a very healing talk. I had not been invited to speak at our departmental meeting since leaving and it was nice to talk to my fellow pediatricians. I try to keep as low as a profile as I can these days, since so much of my advocacy is outside of work. It’s complicated work , politics, scheduling, interpersonal dynamics. But we have to all work together to keep the wheels of the HMO going. But the talk was on air pollution and health, and I had taken a good amount of time to prepare for the talk. Two students had the opportunity to deliver their talks and it went well. Several of my fellow pediatricians gave me feedback which was positive, and I’ve since watched my talk several times and it landed well.

There has been some super interesting developments on the H3SD project! We are putting together our fourth annual H3SD San Diego’s Heat and Human Health Summit. Things are going really well. I feel more in control this year, since I’m more involved with the planning. Our speaker coordinator Wooch Kim is going to send out the speaker scheduling emails soon. I’ve been working with our HMO CME team. Proud of the line up of sessions and we are definitely thinking together and generating new ideas and projects and collaborations together.

The cool thing, is that I helped connect the American College of Physicians Region 3 with the San Diego Foundation, and they are putting on the first ever binational border health conference end of August! It is the internal medicine group and they are super powerful and influential, and they are our friends! ACP actually has been involved with H3SD since it’s inception, and gives us a small grant and their membership attends too. But they are putting on a first of it’s kind conference where the first day is at UC San Diego and the second day is at a medical school in Tijuana. I’ve been invited! I’m super excited to see what my internal medicine colleagues are up to! They are going to have some sessions on environmental health!

I think we were able to bridge a lot of institutional divides and professional society divides because this work for many of us in volunteer. Being an environmental health hobbyist is a very effective thing! My friend Dr. Dear Friend said she didn’t think I should call myself a yapologists, but I like that term! I’m a clean air yapologists! I yap for free. I also blog for free! I figure it’s free entertainment for myself and for the world! My goal is just to inspire folks to do their part, or at least know there is a movement out there of doctors and medical student and premedical students in San Diego trying to help with the climate crisis.

It’s the long holiday weekend so I hope everyone has a great and sustainable time! I’ll be anxiously awaiting to see what happens with the Sea World lightshow (or are they doing fireworks this year?). I’m anxious to see how the birds in Mission Bay do. We had a bird massacre two years ago, when hundreds of birds died on West Ski Island. Here is some of the coverage 2 years ago https://voiceofsandiego.org/2024/07/19/bird-nerds-take-war-against-mission-bay-fireworks-to-councilmembers/

It was cool to be involved in this fight for cleaner air and helping the birds in Mission Bay. We need more birds and more wildlife. We are all interconnected! A bunch of pediatricians and county health folks are going to drop an article on this concept soon called “One Health.” It’s an entire real public health concept! So cool! I love being in this place and learning about the world and human health and environmental health. It’s so fun to be a climate and health hobbyist!