Infectious Disease Prevention Must be a Priority, Global Nursing Report Says

• Nurses must be at the forefront of infectious disease prevention, according to the 2025 Global Nurses United staffing report. 
• GNU argued that there’s a correlation between climate change and infectious diseases that must be addressed. 
• The organization called for prioritization of infectious disease prevention. 

Climate change and infectious disease go hand in hand, and nurses must be at the forefront of preventing the spread of these diseases, according to a new report. 

“Nurses have always cared for patients with infectious diseases, ready to spring into action to protect our patients during outbreaks,” the 2025 Global Nurses United staffing report stated. “But too often health care employers have imposed an expectation that we will put ourselves in harm’s way without the necessary protections to keep us safe and free from infection.” 

Those protections range from proper staffing levels to awareness of, and a response to, climate change — the effects of which GNU argued is causing pathogenic diseases to “easily escalate.”

Climate Change and Infectious Disease Prevention

A 2023 proposal from GNU, referenced in its new report, suggested that climate change is “already accelerating disease transmission,” in addition to its effect on air quality and food production.  

“Increasing temperatures and extreme weather events are already having profound effects on public health leading to increased risks of heat stroke, physical injury, malnutrition, exposure to infectious diseases, and health impacts from displacement and exposure to conflict,” the organization stated in 2023. 

An Emerging Microbes & Infections article published in 2024 substantiated these claims, noting the effects of climate change increase “transmission of food-, water- and vector-borne disease through expanding “the size of a pathogen reservoir or its host population.” 

“Climate change can increase pathogen abundance by enhancing the survival and reproduction of pathogens or their hosts in existing environmental niches or expanding the number, size, or reproductive potential of these niches in an existing or expanded geographic range,” the authors stated. 

Respiratory viruses, according to the study authors, could provide the best evidence of climate change’s effects on infectious diseases due to the seasonality of the viruses. But new technologies like biosensors and satellite imagery could help mitigate the effects.  

Increasing temperatures also put healthcare workers at risk — physically, mentally and emotionally — according to GNU 

“Governments have a responsibility to incentivize increased investments in clinical training related to climate disasters to ensure that our health care workforce is prepared to handle the health impacts of a rapidly warming planet,” GNU stated in 2023. “Healthcare facilities must institute safe staffing, workplace protections and hazard pay when protections are not possible, for nurses and other health care workers during climate disruptions, as well as appropriate personal protective equipment.”

Role of Safe Staffing in Infectious Disease Prevention

The report also stated that safe staffing is “essential” to protect both nurses and patients, as it allows patients to be “effectively screened and promptly isolated and cared for to limit the spread of infectious diseases.”

GNU proposed in 2023 that governments invest in healthcare infrastructure, involve healthcare leaders in risk management discussions, and properly equip medical supply chains.

But just this month, the White House eliminated the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Healthcare Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee, prompting outrage from nursing groups and the Infectious Disease Society of America.

“Healthcare workers remember what happens when politics overrides science,” Oregon Nurses Association NA President Tamie Cline, RN, stated. “Eliminating HICPAC will drive up infection rates, prolong hospital stays, increase costs, and, most importantly, cost lives. Calling the committee ‘unnecessary’ insults every nurse and caregiver who has fought to keep patients safe through COVID-19 surges, RSV spikes, and emergent superbugs.” 

The Bottom Line

The 2025 Global Nurses United report called out the correlation between climate change and infectious disease prevention. Recent research backs up the report and echoes the concerns raised about increases in the spread of disease. Infection prevention methods are vital, though the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s advisory committee in that area was recently disbanded. Healthcare groups have voiced opposition to its termination. 

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