Emory Medical School, at the behest of its student population, has formally incorporated the health impacts of climate change into the medical school curriculum. The addition, which follows many public health programs throughout the country, makes Emory the latest elite medical school to incorporate climate-related health courses.
Emory’s decision—and the student pressure behind it—falls in line with an article published last fall in The Journal of Climate Change and Health. In the article, survey results (including responses from 600 students from 12 medical schools) showed that most medical students want to include climate change in their studies. 83.9 percent of respondents believed that climate change and its health effects should be included within the core medical school curriculum. 13 percent believed that their school currently provided adequate education on the topic. And just 6.3 percent of students said that they felt “very prepared” to discuss how climate change can affect health with a patient.
Momentum around educating students on climate change is growing within the medical community. Emory joins Johns Hopkins University, Harvard, Yale, and the University of Washington among others. Johns Hopkins created its Environmental Health Institute in 2007, and in 2017 Columbia University unveiled its Global Consortium on Climate and Health Education. Columbia’s Consortium, which develops best practices for teaching climate health, has now grown to include 47 U.S. medical schools as members, as well as more than 240 schools of medicine, nursing, public health, dentistry, and veterinary medicine globally.
Additionally, the American Medical Association has endorsed teaching medical students about the impacts of the climate on health. “All physicians, whether in training or in practice for many years, have to be able to assess for, manage, and effectively treat the health effects of climate change,” Lisa Howley, PhD and AAMC Senior Director of Strategic Initiatives and Partnerships said.
The AAMC understands that there will be some resistance to climate health’s inclusion in already packed curriculums, and have highlighted a few ways climate change has been meaningfully integrated into current medical curriculums:
At the University of Illinois College of Medicine (Urbana-Champaign), climate-related health risks have been incorporated into case scenarios to promote a physician’s consideration of the environment along with other contextual factors. The physician also learns to incorporate and consider not just medical treatment, but also environmental mitigation factors (masks, HVAC filters, etc.).
At the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (New York City), climate information has been integrated into existing medical content for first- and second-year students. For example, slides that cover Lyme disease also include information on how climate change impacts tick habitats. The information is designed to complement existing content.
At the University of Colorado School of Medicine, an elective course for fourth-year students titled “Climate Medicine,” incorporates op-ed writing in addition to climate and health content.
At the University of California San Francisco Medical School, medical students partner with nursing and dentistry students to create the Human Health and Climate Change group to facilitate educational forums and on-campus sustainability initiatives.