Evidence continues to mount about the threats that climate change poses to human health. Extreme heat, for example, increases the risk of strokes and heart attacks and exacerbates underlying health conditions such as diabetes and asthma, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The National Institutes of Health found that changes in air and water temperatures can increase bacteria, parasites, and chemical contaminants in food. According to research published February 7 by the United Nations Environment Program, climate change is heightening the risk posed by antibiotic-resistant viruses.
You might assume that the nation’s medical schools are on the case. Not exactly. A 2022 survey by the International Federation of Medical Students' Associations found that only 15 percent of medical schools worldwide were teaching a climate-and-health curriculum. The figures are better in this country. A 2022 study by the Association of American Medical Colleges found the percentage of medical schools covering the health effects of climate change doubled, to 55 percent in 2022 from 27 percent in 2019.
Karly Hampshire, now a fourth-year medical student at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), is one of those who has been working hard to boost that percentage. Recalling her initial days of med school in 2018, when wildfires were raging in California, Humphrey told MedPage Today, “Even though we were walking to school every day in this awful hellscape ... our pulmonary block did not cover the health effects of air pollution,"
Hampshire and colleagues created the Planetary Health Report Card in 2019 to compile data on medical schools' climate-related offerings. The database includes information on 87 member institutions in eight countries, rating schools based on their planetary health curriculum, interdisciplinary research, institutional support for student-led projects, community engagement and advocacy efforts, and campus sustainability.
Within the next 5 or 10 years, Hampshire said, most schools will likely offer climate-and-health content. "We're already seeing the health effects of climate change play out in our immediate surroundings and immediate communities," Hampshire said. "I think medical schools will start to feel like they're lagging behind if they don't address it in the curriculum."
"This is fundamental to the mission of medicine," Renee Salas, MD, MPH, MS, an emergency medicine physician at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston who researches climate change and health, told Amanda D’Ambroio of MedPage Today. "It is an obligation of medical schools and continuing education to ensure that we can optimally prepare individuals to practice in today's environment.”
Medical schools have taken different approaches to offering such education. Some schools offer semester-long courses on climate and health. Others choose a longitudinal approach, integrating climate change into their existing curriculum. Climate-and-health advocates have argued for an integrated approach to climate change education in medical school in order to address the concerns about taking time away from other necessary clinical topics.
Another institution moving forward on climate change is 350-year-old Harvard Medical School. Now in her third year there, Madeleine Kline was among a small group of students and faculty who helped convince school leaders to adopt the new curriculum, which was approved in January. It will include instruction on the effects of climate change on human health, the role health care systems play in contributing to climate change, and how physicians can work to be part of the solution.
As calls to include climate change in medical curriculums grow, The Boston Globe’s Zeina Mohammed reported, so do the resources available to schools interested in making changes. Last year, trainees and faculty at several U.S. universities launched the Climate Resources for Health Education, a free, digital resource bank to help guide the incorporation of climate change into medical curricula.