PSR Colorado

Guided by the values and expertise of medicine and public health, we work to protect human life from the gravest threats to health and survival.

We won’t give up! 

Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) national was founded in 1961 with the motto “Prevention is the only cure.” This has led us to educate and advocate for nuclear weapons reductions and the prevention of nuclear war and more recently to rise to the challenge of the climate crisis.

PSR Colorado, a chapter of PSR national, believes in prevention and works at the state and local levels to support policies that will protect the public and our precious environment that supports life on the planet.

Our members are health care and public health professionals, concerned scientists, parents and students, and impacted community members. We always base our work on reliable medical and scientific data and follow the principle of "do no harm".

Last year, with help from donors, we worked at the local and state levels to educate and support communities in their efforts to mitigate production and use of fossil fuels and its harmful health impacts through lobbying, educating decision-makers, letters to the editor, testimonies and seminars. 

We supported policies that promote renewable energy sources such as wind and solar instead of false solutions like carbon credits and carbon capture that prolong our reliance of fossil fuels and harm our health.

We lobbied for legislation that would raise the standards for new air conditioning systems and provide financial support for adoption of heat pumps that reduce consumer dependence on gas.

We engaged health professionals and allies in advocacy for measures that will reduce harms to those people in the communities suffering from the cumulative impacts of  exposures to toxic chemical emissions from oil and gas, big industry, and highway pollution. We participated in rulemaking at the Energy and Carbon Management Commission to push for protections from these exposures. 

 We promoted policies that would provide wide-scale funding for transitioning from gas to high efficiency electric heat pumps for heating and cooling and for high efficiency stoves and electric appliances in homes. 

Along with the Colorado Renewable Energy Society, we successfully intervened at the Colorado Public Utilities Commission to stop Xcel's plans to bring dangerous hydrogen into homes. 

Our members work to educate and advocate for legal and policy action to reduce public exposure to plutonium and other radioactive contaminants in the Rocky Flats Wildlife Refuge. Recently, we joined allies to educate and testify at Westminster City Council hearings and were successful in urging their withdrawal from the Rocky Mountain Greenway that would run through the area surrounding the former nuclear weapons plant.

And we will be speaking out to make sure that when the Comanche 3 coal fired plant in Pueblo is closed, it will be replaced by safe renewable energy and not unproven small nuclear reactors.