Doctors must be trained to handle the impact of climate change on our health

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. We trust doctors to be up to date with the latest in medical science. So it’s concerning that our future medical professionals aren’t being trained sufficiently or consistently on a very real threat to public health: climate change.

With doctors and students alike raising the alarm, new initiatives such as the European Network on Climate & Health Education (ENCHE), are springing up to better align medical practice with the climate crisis. But broad structural changes need to follow. ENCHE was launched last week by a group of 25 medical schools from 12 European countries.

Led by the University of Glasgow, the network will be the first regional hub of the Global Consortium on Climate and Health Education (GCCHE) at Columbia University in New York. Members of ENCHE have pledged to embed climate education into their training of more than 10,000 medical students alongside campaigning for structural changes higher up, such embedding such topics into national curricula, continuing professional education and exam boards. The intersection of public health and the climate crisis runs deep.

Rising global temperatures not only threaten what the World Health Organization calls the “essential ingredients of good health"— clean air, safe drinking water, nutritious food and safe shelter—they’re also having an impact on cardio-respiratory and infectious diseases; mental health and pregnancy; and paediatric and geriatric care. For instance, heat worsens common mood disorders such as anxiety and depression as well as rarer conditions like schizophrenia. Medications commonly used to treat them can also make hot weather harder to bear by affecting a patient’s thermoregulation and fluid levels.