Introduction

This course covers the basic Public Health aspects of climate change and its impact on populations. It aims to inform about the dangers of climate change to Public Health and spur us into action. 

The course is designed to help you: 

• Understand the key historical and projected estimates of climate change, and the human influence on climate change.
• Understand the magnitude of the potential health problems for your local, national, and global populations from climate change, and advise on the implementation of improved data collection and accuracy (numerator and denominator), as well as explore and analyze the potential Public Health benefits of addressing climate change.
• Understand how the health impacts of climate change relate to the ecosystem and environmental sustainability.
• Identify the key issues which must be addressed when developing policy options and understand the main global players and influences.
• Debate the strengths and weaknesses of a variety of potential interventions to reduce the Public Health impact of climate change in your setting.

Module 1: Introduction to Climate Change

Headline Competence (Learning Outcome): After completing this Module, you should be able to:

Understand the key historical and projected estimates of climate change, and the human influence on climate change.

Before exploring the resources, you might want to look at this short video from NASA (Published on Jan 20, 2016). This visualization illustrates Earth’s long-term warming trend, showing temperature changes from 1880 to 2015 as a rolling five-year average. Orange colors represent temperatures that are warmer than the 1951-80 baseline average, while blues represent temperatures cooler than the baseline.

Module 2: Climate Change and Human Health

Headline Competence (Learning Outcome): After completing this Module, you should be able to:

Understand the magnitude of the potential health problems for your local, national, and global populations from climate change, and be able to advise on the implementation of improved data collection and accuracy (numerator and denominator), as well as explore and analyze the potential Public Health benefits of addressing climate change.

Look at this short video from the Lancet Commission on Health and Climate Change. It is an excellent introduction to the topic.

Module 3: Climate Change in the Context of Environmental Sustainability

Headline Competence (Learning Outcome): After completing this Module, you should be able to: 

Understand how the health impacts of climate change relate to the ecosystem and environmental sustainability.

Before exploring the resources below, you might like to look at this short video “Welcome to the Anthropocene.”

Module 4: Climate Change, Policy and Politics

Headline Competence (Learning Outcome): After completing this Module, you should be able to:

Identify the key issues which must be addressed when developing policy options and understand the main global players and influences.

Module 5: What Can We Do About Climate Change?

Headline Competence (Learning Outcome): After completing this Module, you should be able to:

Debate the strengths and weaknesses of a variety of potential interventions to reduce the Public Health impact of climate change in your setting.

Bear in mind the headline comment from a 2014 report by 18 prestigious scientists:

“In the face of an absolutely unprecedented emergency, society has no choice but to take dramatic action to avert a collapse of civilisation. Either we will change our ways and build an entirely new kind of global society, or they will be changed for us”.