.png)
Laura: Where did you grow up and where do you live now?
Dick: I started out my life in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania back in the day when the steel mills and coal plants were in full tilt. At the time I remember as a little tyke looking out the window and saying to my mother "smoke, smoke, terrible smoke!" because the air was very dirty. Then we moved to Waukegan, Illinois. I grew up there as a teenager and then I was out to school in California, then Champaign-Urbana. We lived in Marshfield when I entered practice in a very rural community in what was a much smaller outfit back then. Now, it's a very large medical complex. Currently, we live in the western part of Wisconsin in Maiden Rock.
Laura: Could you tell me a little bit about the kind of work that you did?
Dick: I was trained at the Cleveland Clinics in both internal medicine and in the subspecialty of nephrology or kidney disease. At that time, there was an exceptional group of people researching high blood pressure, so I got a heavy dose of that both in terms of therapeutics that were available at the time, new drugs that were coming along, and the research that was related to one of the major biological systems. Some people were at the cutting edge of that research and that was a profound stimulus for me and my interests. Coming to Marshfield, I was the third adult nephrologist. The three of us started the dialysis unit, took care of patients with kidney disease, and principally began to see the evolution, particularly of the effects of diabetes on kidney disease.
Laura: What would you do on your perfect weekend in Wisconsin?
Dick: My wife and I love to canoe, bike, and hike. Also, I love to do walks with birdwatching, and we've also been involved with restoring farmland to prairie along rivers. So on a weekend, if it's a nice day, we would get into some kind of outdoor sport.
Laura: What brought you to Healthy Climate Wisconsin?
Dick: Great question, and that is Dr. Joel Charles. I had been the president of the Wisconsin Medical Society and Joel came to me and asked about submitting a request that they update the Wisconsin Medical Society's policies on climate and health, and that initiated a great deal of this.
Laura: What is one of your favorite projects that you’ve worked on with Healthy Climate Wisconsin?
Dick: I think that's a simple answer and it was the work that we did to get the EPA to enact stronger particulate matter standards. That felt really good. I think the other thing that I've been involved with that I felt good about was sharing some legitimate literature at the time that the NTEC project was going on up in Superior. I sent that to one of the council members and hoped that they would read it. It was about why gas plants aren't any better than coal-fired plants. Those have been the highlights to date as we keep working on this.
Laura: If you could broadcast something to every Wisconsinite about health and climate what would you say?
Dick: Health and climate are integral to all ages. It is indiscriminate and applicable across the board. The effects may be different but no one can escape the realities of excessive heat, excessive humidity, or excessive drought. They take a toll on your body's adaptability and health and wellbeing. If you have underlying conditions, that's a confounding factor. That compounds the problem. We really have to be attentive, informed, and understanding about what this means, not only for the older adult population, but also younger people, particularly children.
Laura: What is a topic that you really geek out about?
Dick: I think probably because of my longstanding history, interest, and actual work in the field, I'd say high blood pressure. Some simple changes in technique can have a profound impact on the decisions we make in healthcare.
Laura: What brings you hope?
Dick: I think it's being surrounded with, connected to, and interacting with like-minded souls who are devoted to something that they realize is so critical to the health and wellbeing of society.