Adapting Public Health Curriculums to Climate Change Challenges
2-by-2 tables and how to write grant applications will not cut it when it comes to mitigating the effects of global climate change on public health.
Whether you like it or not, the Earth is getting hotter. If you follow the science, the cause is simple: We release carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from fossil fuel consumption at levels never before seen in human history. If you don’t like the science and evidence, then something else is causing global climate change. Either way, it’s happening, and you need to prepare for decades of record weather events that will threaten populations far and wide.
I’ve been having discussions with colleagues on what schools and programs in public health should teach their current and future students about climate change. Sure, we have the traditional epidemiology, where we look at results of studies and make inferences on the cause and effect of human diseases and conditions. There are the social determinants of health as a framework for understanding that the way society looks at a population influences that population’s risk of bad health outcomes. And there are many theories of human behavior explaining why I — and millions of others — continue to drive gasoline-powered…
