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Around the world, medical students are demanding that the health impacts of extreme weather events be taught in medical schools. Environmental health has become a critical issue in training the doctors of today and tomorrow.
More courses on climate health in medical schools: this is the subject of the demands of a whole group of students, whose voice was relayed in an article published in early August in the journal Nature Medicine. Called Students for Environmental Action in Medicine, the group is made up of medical students at Harvard Medical School (USA). They are demanding curriculum reform and suggesting ways to implement it. In 2022, a pilot teaching program was set up within the prestigious medical school to address lung and heart health from the perspective of the climate crisis, for example by studying cardio-respiratory problems linked to temperature changes and air pollution.
A test that has borne fruit and led to a long-term collaboration between students and teaching staff, who discuss and develop programs together to better integrate the subject of climate change into university curricula. The idea is to make ecology a cross-cutting theme by including the issue of environmental health in each course, so as not to add an additional burden to the (already very rich) teaching programs of medical studies.
250,000 additional deaths per year between 2030 and 2050
But it is not only at Harvard that this question is being discussed. As the article published in Nature Medicine55% of the 150 medical schools and university hospitals surveyed each year in the United States have included climate change in a required or optional course in 2022. In France, the idea is also gaining ground. Since the start of the 2023 academic year, a mandatory six-hour module on “environmental health” has been rolled out in around thirty medical universities. Aimed at second- or third-year medical students, the program aims to educate students on the health consequences of the degradation of the planet, as well as the impact of our health system on the environment.
In recent decades, there has been growing evidence in the scientific literature that extreme weather events (wildfires, floods, droughts, heat waves, storms, hurricanes, etc.) have negative consequences on physical and mental health. For example, a recent study demonstrated how smoke inhaled during wildfires can increase the risk of dementia. According to estimates from the World Health Organizationnearly 250,000 additional deaths per year between 2030 and 2050, could be attributed solely to malnutrition, malaria, diarrhea and heat stress.