Health Care Without Harm and the Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments (AHNE) annually present the Charlotte Brody Award to a nurse who promotes and protects environmental health. The 2024 honoree, Michael Collins, BSN, R, is a retired nurse who first got involved in climate justice when he noticed that the summers in Nevada were getting hotter and hotter and he started to see more respiratory illnesses in his patients that were related to the heat and pollution in the Las Vegas valley. This drove him to the Nurse Alliance of SEIU Healthcare. The Nurse Alliance of SEIU started a campaign with AHNE where he was asked to go to DC for a training on lobbying which introduced Michael to lobbying at the United States Congress for climate legislation. He would continue to travel to DC for lobbying efforts, participating in fire drill Fridays with the likes of Jane Fonda and other nurses once getting arrested in the Hart building for protesting in support of more climate conscious policy making.
Michael still participates in lobbying efforts to this day as well as protest actions. Most recently, Michael traveled to speak to several of Nevada’s Congressional delegation with the Climate Action Campaign to support OSHA policies that will go into effect this year.
Michael is a firm believer that a core component of nursing is teaching so he’s used the knowledge he’s gained from his lobbying and protest efforts to educate his colleagues to become more aware of the issues affecting patients; helping them to see the connection between climate and health. He has also served as chair on the Southern Nevada Board of Health Advisory Board for four years.
Currently, he is the president of an organization called IndigenousAF that supports community work and projects which strengthen Indigenous cultures, knowledge, and identity through the arts and education. One of the issues his community is facing in Nevada is that multinational companies are trying to build lithium mines on Native Western Shoshone land. These actions have the potential to destroy the watersheds in Northern Nevada by polluting the water thus taking water away from agriculture in the area and desecrating the sacred lands of the Western Shoshone. Michael spends his time in retirement lobbying, traveling around the country to participate in Native American ceremonies, and fighting against the construction of the mines on Western Shoshone land.
