Climate change and health in international medical education – a narrative review

Abstract

Objective: Climate change is a key threat to human health worldwide. Accordingly, medical education should prepare future physicians for climate-associated hazards and corresponding professional challenges. Currently, this is not yet implemented across the board. The aim of this review is to present (I) the knowledge and (II) the attitudes of medical students and physicians towards climate change and (III) the expectations of medical education as formulated by medical students. In addition, the available literature will be used to look at (IV) global teaching activities, (V) international learning goals and learning goal catalogues, and (VI) applied teaching methods and formats. This review should simplify and, considering the urgency of the topic, accelerate the design of future teaching activities.Methodology: The paper is based on a selective literature search supplemented by a topic-guided internet search.Results: Knowledge about the causes and concrete health consequences of climate change seems to be incomplete. The majority of medical students consider human health to be at risk from climate change and the health sector to be inadequately prepared. A majority of surveyed medical students would like to see teaching about climate change. It is evident that internationally, teaching projects on climate change and climate health, as well as topic-specific learning objectives and learning goal catalogues, have been developed and integrated into medical education.Conclusion: There is a need for and acceptance of teaching climate change in the medical curriculum. This literature review can assist in the development and implementation of new teaching formats.

Keywords

• global warming
• medical education
• health education
• environmental health
• climate change