Try GOLD - Free
BILL FRIST
Time
|April 14, 2025
Working across the aisle requires talking about the human impacts of climate change

TO TENNESSEE REPUBLICAN WILLIAM FRIST, who began his career not in politics but in medicine, taking on the climate crisis was a natural next move after stepping down from the U.S. Senate in 2007. “It comes back to the same thing: improving the well-being of people by focusing on their health,” says Frist, who was first elected in 1994 and served as majority leader from 2003 to 2007.
It was only logical, then, that last year he partnered with the Nature Conservatory to establish the Senator Bill and Tracy Frist Initiative for Planetary and Human Health, which aims to bridge public-health solutions and the climate crisis. Frist says focusing on communicating the health impacts of climate change—which range from an increase in mental-health crises to heightened risk of respiratory and cardiovascular disease—is all about showing people that climate is not a partisan issue.
TIME: You have called for climate change to be recognized as a public-health crisis. Why is it important to reframe the way we look at climate change?
This story is from the April 14, 2025 edition of Time.
Subscribe to Magzter GOLD to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
MORE STORIES FROM Time

Time
Where electricity bills are on the ballot
Clockwise from top left: downtown Atlanta at night; high-voltage transmission lines near Rome, Ga.; a QTS data center in Atlanta's Howell Station neighborhood; Georgia Power's coal-fired Plant Bowen in Euharlee, Ga.
14 mins
September 08, 2025

Time
THE 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL PEOPLE IN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
MATTHEW PRINCE HAD TO BE CONVERTED to the belief that AI is eating the web.
3 mins
September 08, 2025

Time
Two good men confront the Task of forgiveness
CRIME DRAMAS, IN OUR DISTRACTED TIMES, TEND TO front-load said crimes. More often than not, there’s a murder within the first five minutes. This is only one of the genre’s many implicit rules that HBO’s Task breaks. The series from Mare of Easttown creator Brad Ingelsby opens with a montage of quotidian scenes from the lives of two men. Weary Tom Brandis (Mark Ruffalo) folds his hands in prayer, dunks his face in a sink full of ice water, downs Advil while driving. Rugged Robbie Prendergrast (Tom Pelphrey) carries his sleeping son to bed, pours himself a tall mug of coffee, perks up at a radio ad for a dating app.
3 mins
September 08, 2025

Time
Beyond human control
THE RACE FOR ARTIFICIAL GENERAL INTELLIGENCE POSES NEW RISKS TO AN UNSTABLE WORLD
11 mins
September 08, 2025

Time
In exile, I lost India but gained a home
ON NOV. 7, 2019, THE GOVERNMENT OF PRIME MINISTER Narendra Modi revoked my Overseas Citizenship of India (OCI), effectively banning me from the country I grew up in. India was where my mother and grandmother lived. Where four out of my five books of fiction and nonfiction were set. Where I had returned after college in the U.S. with the aim of being “an Indian writer.”
6 mins
September 08, 2025

Time
POOR VOTE, SWING VOTE
On the one hand, this is the worst of times: power is concentrated in the hands of people who pray at the opening of Congress, then prey on the people they swore an oath to serve.
3 mins
September 08, 2025

Time
SUMMER OF OUR DISCONTENT
In The Roses, Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch embrace a movie season of not- so-romantic comedies
6 mins
September 08, 2025

Time
PUTIN’S BRUSH-OFF
The Kremlin appears in no rush to negotiate peace with Ukraine—despite Trump’s efforts
3 mins
September 08, 2025

Time
The agentic age: a new frontier for AI and humans
FOR THE PAST YEAR, I’VE BEEN RUNNING SALES- force with a colleague who never sleeps, never takes vacations, and has read more than I could in 100 lifetimes. On a typical day, sitting with a few executives around the table, I’ll ask it to evaluate a competitor's moves, refine a keynote draft, or surface strategic blind spots we might have missed.
5 mins
September 08, 2025

Time
Why are so many women leaving the workforce?
212,000. THAT'S HOW MANY WOMEN AGES 20 AND OVER have left the U.S. workforce since January, according to the most recent jobs numbers released Aug. 1 by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. (By contrast, 44,000 men of the same age have entered the workforce since January.) The numbers are especially stark for women with children. From January to June, the labor-force participation rate of women ages 25 to 44 living with a child under 5 fell nearly 3 percentage points, from 69.7% to 66.9%, says Misty Lee Heggeness, an associate professor of economics and public affairs at the University of Kansas.
2 mins
September 08, 2025
Listen
Translate
Change font size