Introduction by Croakey: Academic institutions around the world will be urged to strengthen their focus on climate change in the education of health professionals during a global event occurring on Thursday, 9 June.
The WHO-Civil Society Working Group to Advance Action on Climate Change and Health is calling on academic institutions to incorporate climate change in curricula, and will co-host a formal launch of this call with the Global Consortium on Climate and Health Education.
Speakers at the online event include: Dr Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum, Head of the World Health Organization Climate Unit; Dr Jeni Miller, Executive Director, Global Climate and Health Alliance; Associate Professor Ying Zhang, Chair, Capacity Building Subcommittee, WHO-Civil Society Working Group on Climate and Health; Dr Cecilia Sorensen, Director, Global Consortium on Climate and Health Education at Columbia University; and Lynne Madden, Professor of Population and Planetary Health, The University of Notre Dame Australia.
Also speaking will be representatives of the International Federation of Medical Students Associations and the International Pharmaceutical Students Federation. Register here to join the discussions on 9 June (2-3 pm Geneva, 10-11pm Sydney, 8-9am New York).
Meanwhile, Isabel Waters, a fourth-year medical student in Ireland who has been involved with the Planetary Health Report Card, explains in the article below how students are helping to drive change in curricula.
The report card evaluates more than 60 medical schools in five countries for their teaching around planetary health, and Waters encourages Australians to join the initiative.
Isabel Waters writes:
“You cannot understand true medicine power (in whatever capacity that may be) unless you have an understanding of the nature of things”: Dr Nicole Redvers writes in an article titled, ‘The Science of the Sacred: Bridging Global Indigenous Medicine Systems and Modern Scientific Principles’.
Human health is intrinsically linked to the wellbeing of the planet. All medical advances are dependent on the environment surrounding a patient and the way in which they interact with that environment.
Take a young woman presenting to the emergency department with an acute exacerbation of asthma, for example, who is prescribed a new inhaler for better control of her chronic asthma and an oral steroid to treat the exacerbation. That woman is then discharged to resume life in an environment where population exposure to particulate matter less than 2.5cm in diameter (PM2.5) exceeds the 95th percentile of historical daily mean values, as is the case in certain areas in Australia.
Between October 2019 and February 2020, bushfire smoke was responsible for 113 attendances to the emergency department due to asthma in Queensland, 702 in New South Wales, 89 in Australian Capital Territory and 401 in Victoria. Bushfire smoke has also been attributed to a significant number of excess deaths in these regions.
Now imagine this woman is from a low income household that is subject to flooding, putting her at risk of water-borne illness, displacement and depression. When vulnerability to drought and reliance on water resources for food security is taken into account, it paints an even more worrying picture.
This profound relationship between the changing climate and human health has been recognised by the World Health Organization (WHO), who attribute almost a quarter of deaths and global disease burden to environmental degradation. Health professionals are working at the centre of this crisis.
Yet the majority have not had any specific training dedicated to recognising and treating the health effects of climate change.
Student-driven
The Planetary Health Report Card (PHRC) is a student-driven initiative that aims to collate data from health professional schools across five discrete metrics: 1) Curriculum, 2) Interdisciplinary Research in health and environment, 3) Community Outreach and Advocacy, 4) Support for Student-Led Initiatives and 5) Campus Sustainability.
On Earth Day 2022, the PHRC published report cards from 74 medical schools across seven countries (US, UK, Canada, Ireland, Germany, Japan, Malaysia).
As we come to the end of the PHRC’s third cycle, the summary report highlights examples of where it has inspired institutional change, as well as recommendations based on pertinent best current examples from different schools globally. In this way, the PHRC not only serves as a data resource on planetary health teaching, but also facilitates cross-institutional sharing of these resources to catalyse innovation in the planetary health movement.
The 2021-2022 cycle saw the PHRC expand to Germany and Japan. Report cards in South Africa and New Zealand are in the works for next year. Aside from reaching more nations, the PHRC has had exciting developments in other directions too.
The initiative has been expanded into the pharmacy and nursing professions, with a pharmacy pilot report also published on Earth Day. We are also aiming to publish a nursing pilot, alongside the medical school pilot currently being carried out in India.
As well as expansion, the report card itself has evolved based on feedback to best reflect current knowledge and areas of development. For example, a new question on the importance of Indigenous knowledge in planetary health solutions was added this year. This supports the call from the Lancet Planetary Health Commission for socially dominant westernised groups to be trained by Indigenous groups in protecting the environment and health – 80 percent of the world’s biodiversity is currently stewerded by Indigenous groups!
In addition, sustainability in healthcare has been given more emphasis, with new metrics included on the topic and a new recommendation added that focuses specifically on the inclusion of sustainable healthcare in teaching and in practice. This acknowledges that healthcare is part of the problem, contributing approximately five percent of the global carbon footprint.
To add to its impact, the PHRC has recently been acknowledged by international journals as a valuable tool, with a new publication in Lancet Planetary Health outlining its conception, development and progress. This is in addition to a BMJ piece published in January. The leadership team has also published a literature review, outlining the evidence behind each of the report card’s metrics to help students advocate for change when communicating with their faculty.
The PHRC are in the process of recruiting new teams for next year’s cycle which will kick off at the end of the summer. If you are a health professional student with a passion for planetary health or environmental justice please do not hesitate to contact us as would love to expand the initiative to Australia.
Please visit https://phreportcard.org for more information on contacting us and to see our published results for the last three years.
As health professionals, we have a crucial role to play in the planetary health movement. It is our job to educate our patients on environmental hazards and how to minimise their risk, to treat disease attributable to climate change, and to promote sustainable healthcare.
However, how can we expect doctors and allied health professionals to do this without adequate training in medical school?
The Planetary Health Report Card highlights this gap in teaching globally as well as providing actionable solutions with proven success in inspiring change.
• Isabel Waters is a 4th year medical student in Trinity College Dublin in Ireland and the current Irish regional lead of the Planetary Health Report Card. She is passionate about planetary health, environmental justice and health equity. She got involved in the PHRC in 2020-2021 cycle, the second year it was running in her medical school. She is very excited to be next year’s co-director of the PHRC.
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