Europe’s medical schools will increase training on diseases linked to the climate crisis

Mosquito-borne diseases such as dengue and malaria will become a larger part of the curriculum at medical schools across Europe in light of the climate crisis.

Future doctors will also receive more training on how to recognize and treat heatstroke, and they will be expected to consider the climate impact of treatments such as inhalers for asthma, medical school leaders said, as they announced the creation of the European Union network for climate and health education. (Enche).

Led by the University of Glasgow, 25 medical schools from Britain, Belgium and France will integrate climate lessons into their education for more than 10,000 students.

Dr. Camille Huser from the University of Glasgow, co-chair of the network, said: “The doctors of the future will see a different range of presentations and diseases that they don’t see today. They need to be aware of them so they can recognize them.”

This year it was from Europe hottest summer ever recorded and climate changes are increasing pressure on healthcare.

Insects that spread disease, such as mosquitoes, are expanding their range and are found in new areasaided by changes in temperature and rainfall patterns. Chronic diseases such as cancer, heart and lung disease, diabetes and mental illness can all be affected by factors such as extreme weather or air pollution.

The role of climate in medical school teaching varies considerablysaid Huser, and often consists of just one module or lecture. The network predicts that this will be ‘infused’ throughout education in the future.

“Climate change … is not necessarily creating a whole new set of diseases that we haven’t seen before, but it is exacerbating the diseases that do exist,” Huser said.

“For example, diabetes is not something people associate with climate change at all, but its symptoms and complications are more common and worse for people living in a world where the climate has changed.”

There is also antimicrobial resistance, where pathogens evolve so that existing drugs can no longer treat them effectively worsened by climate breakdown and Huser said this should be reflected in education.

Students will also be taught to advocate for things like active travel – walking or cycling instead of driving – and ‘green prescribing’, where patients are encouraged to undertake activities such as community gardening and tree planting. Both offer health benefits to individuals, but are also positive for the environment.

Encouraging people to take care of their health had “great benefits for them personally,” Huser said, but would also “reduce emissions if they required less input from the health care system.”

She added that many people didn’t realize the healthcare industry was responsible for so much more greenhouse gas emissions than the aviation sector. “When you fly somewhere you feel very guilty, but when you go to the doctor you don’t feel guilty.”

Students will be shown how changes in managing a condition can have an impact. Inhalers used to treat asthma emit greenhouse gases, so controlling the condition not only benefits the patient but also reduces inhaler use. Some patients may be able to switch to dry powder inhalers, which release fewer greenhouse gases.

While there have been piecemeal initiatives at the institutional level, network leaders said this was the first concerted effort around teaching undergraduate medical students. The network will also seek to influence bodies that set national curricula, such as the General Medical Council in Britain, to make addressing the climate crisis a mandatory part of all doctors’ training.

Huser co-chair Prof Iain McInnes, also from the University of Glasgow, said the aim of the network was to “build the conversation into medical curricula so that the doctors of the future can read this conversation and not feel that it is a campaign item.

“This is as crucial and critical to their thinking as it is to controlling obesity, smoking and other environmental challenges. It’s just in the DNA of being a doctor.”

The World Health Organization (WHO) is supporting the initiative, along with private pharmaceutical and healthcare companies including AstraZeneca, Bupa, GSK, Novartis, Novo Nordisk, Roche and Sanofi, as members of the Sustainable Markets Initiative Healthcare Systems Task Forcea public-private partnership working to decarbonize healthcare.

Enche will be a regional hub of the Global Consortium for Climate and Health Education (GCCHE) at Columbia University School of Public Health in New York.

Prof Cecilia Sorensen, director of the GCCHE, said: “Climate change will affect us all, everywhere, but not equally and not in the same way. Regional networks are needed to help health professionals prevent and respond to climate and health challenges unique to the communities they serve.”