Podcast
In Climate Conversations with Irish Doctors for the Environment, we talk to a diverse range of inspirational people who share a deep commitment to their communities and the natural world that sustains them.
Through engaging and broad reaching conversations with leading authors, scientists, activists, and politicians we discover some of the solutions to the climate and biodiversity crises that threaten out future and learn how these solutions will create a healthier, happier, and more equitable world.
All the episode and links to your favourite pod catchers can be found here or below.
In Climate Conversations we talk to a diverse range of inspirational people who share a deep commitment to their communities and the natural world that sustains them. Through engaging and broad reaching conversations with leading authors, scientists, activists and politicians we discover some of the solutions to the climate and biodiversity crises that threaten our future and learn how these solutions will create a healthier, happier and more equitable world.
How does sheltered housing, private nursing home care and single handed GP practice relate to climate change?
Can keeping care in the community, endorsing general practice with schemes to retain GPs rural areas and on islands be a form of carbon capture? Is the model of care described here the missing link in the perennial trolley crisis and demographic cliff edge we face as we head towards 2050?
In this episode of Climate Conversations we talk to Dr Jerry Cowley who has been championing rural healthcare and care closer to home for his entire career as a Co. Mayo GP. By keeping his patients cared for in their own communities, he has not only protected local hospital services, he has allowed patients to live with dignity and in familiar environments, all the while bolstering the resilience of the community in which he works.
Jerry is much more than a GP as his bio below details. Please enjoy this conversation and see if you can relate his frustrations with corporate care, an uneven playing field, hospital overcrowding to how we might deal with escalating healthcare emissions, the trolley crisis and climate change.
Dr Jerry Cowley was a single- handed family doctor in rural general practice in Mulranny, Co. Mayo for the last 43 years. He retired from the GMS on 01/01/2024 but has stayed on -call for St Brendan’s Village in Mulranny. He is a member of the ICGP and the RCGP. He is an honours law graduate as well as a qualified barrister. He is a co-founder and former chairman of the National Federation of Group Water Schemes and a former Vice-President of the Irish Council for Social Housing. He was an Independent TD for County Mayo from 2002 to 2007. He founded and led the successful campaigns for a Mayo Orthopaedic Unit, as well as for a National Irish Helicopter Emergency Medical Service, and for better cancer services including the extension of the Breast Check program to the West and South of Ireland. He has been a strong advocate of providing local rural services to retain local populations, and is the founder and former chairman and now Life President of the “not-for-profit” registered charity Safe Home Ireland (National Repatriation Centre for Ireland) which has to date with the support of the Irish government’s Emigrant Support Program assisted the permanent repatriation of 2250 long term Irish emigrants to return to a place as near as possible from where they left originally after years of emigration. He also is the founder and chairman of St. Brendan’s Village which is another “not-for-profit” charity and recognized as a model of good practice worthy of replication of supporting older people to stay in the place where they have spent most or all of their lives and have the support of family and friends. He is founder and chairman of the Rural Island & Dispensing Doctors of Ireland which held its 36th Annual Conference in Ballinasloe Co Galway in October 2023 and co-hosted World Rural WONCA with the ICGP and School of Medicine UL in June 2022. He is fully supported by his beautiful wife Teresa (the better half of his brain) and his family of five children as well as the local community. His other passion is traditional Achill yawl racing (all of 26 foot long with one lug sail and no engine) which is the original of the wooden sailing boat species. He received the Dr Fiona Bradley AUDGPI award in 2014. He was awarded the Degree of Doctor of Medicine, honoris causa, by the University of Galway in November 2022 in recognition of his lifelong commitment to supporting rural communities