Climate Change and Mental Health Curricula: Addressing Barriers to Teaching

Short animated video increases knowledge and comfort in clinical counseling on inequitable health impacts of air pollution among interprofessional health learners and clinicians

“…While designing our study intervention, we reviewed the literature for barriers of uptake of environmental health education in medicine. The perception that climate-health education would add to the everincreasing scope of social determinants of health in which health professionals are supposed to be wellversed [32][33][34] and the lack of faculty with local expertise in this relatively new and rapidly evolving eld 32,35,36 are cited, highlighting the need to create and evaluate curricular components that are brief and can be self-administered asynchronously by learners and clinicians at their convenience, such as on their mobile devices. Videos, especially those with animation, 37,38 are increasingly considered quick and effective educational tools 39 as stand alone tools or to enhance multimodal learning in interdisciplinary graduate health education.…”

Integrating a climate lens into the design of education programmes for health professionals

“…Climate change should be incorporated in to educational and training programmes for all health professionals to ensure they are able to urgently adapt and transition our health systems to low carbon and low waste models of care and to become climate resilient 4. However, the uptake of climate education in the curricula has been slow, and the current health professional curricula are deficient in climate change and its health impacts 5–7. With the overwhelming scientific evidence on the current and ongoing threats on human health due to climate change, some assert that it may even constitute ‘educational malpractice’ to exclude the wide-ranging implications of climate change on health from these curricula 8…”

“…To adequately reform health professional education, the window of opportunity lies at placing climate change as a priority in institutional visions, missions, policies and strategies. Globally, academic institutions, students and graduates have reported insufficient or absent systematic education on climate change and its effects on health in their curricula 5–7. Historically, inclusion of the climate health in curricula has faced the challenges of the politicisation of climate change, competing organisational priorities, and lack of curricula space and resources 6 9.…”

“…These collective voices from the health professionals provide compelling arguments to educate academic decision-makers about the opinions, recommendations and stance of their workforce to endorse climate-health education. They also serve as signposts in fostering the vision of a broader academic culture that supports updating and evolving existing curricula with emerging evidence and workforce needs 5 6 8. It has been noted that academic institutional support can act as a strong catalyst for building partnerships across health, education, and environment sectors to overcome implementation barriers for curricula reform 5 9…”

“…They also serve as signposts in fostering the vision of a broader academic culture that supports updating and evolving existing curricula with emerging evidence and workforce needs 5 6 8. It has been noted that academic institutional support can act as a strong catalyst for building partnerships across health, education, and environment sectors to overcome implementation barriers for curricula reform 5 9…”