A presentation for the launch of the ASPHER Climate change and health education EU Health Policy Platform network 202207 ASPHER middletonj climate change and health long version.pptx

1. ASPHER’s Ambition in Climate Change &
Health Education
Professor John Middleton
President, Association of Schools of Public
Health in the European Region

5. Carbon dioxide – a legacy for future generations, 15 to 40% of emitted
CO2 will remain in the atmosphere longer than 1,000 years
https://climate.nasa.gov/climate_resources/24/graphic-the-relentless-rise-of-carbon-dioxide/

6. Climate projections after COP 26

7. Climate breakdown and health
Climate breakdown: food insecurity, conflict,
migration
Climate breakdown and direct health effects : heat,
and extreme weather events, air pollution,
pandemic risk, vector borne disease
The role of education

8. Climate breakdown and health
Climate breakdown: food insecurity, conflict,
migration

9. Climate breakdown and health
Climate breakdown: food insecurity

10. Impacts of climate change on the
productivity of food crops in 2050
World Bank Publishers
World bank Development report 2010
http://wdronline.worldbank.org/

11. ~1 billion people exposed to extreme heat preventing moderate physical
labour in the hottest month after global temperature >2·5°C above pre-
industrial levels.
(Andrews et al 2018 Lancet Planetary Health )

12. Climate
breakdown
is here now!
marine life
extinction

13. Climate breakdown and health
Climate breakdown: conflict

14. Interconnectedness:
conflict over natural
resources: oil, water

15. Interconnectness: Loss of agricultural land through global
warming, crop failure, food riots, Arab Spring, Syrian war

16. Climate breakdown and health
Climate breakdown: migration

17. Climate breakdown: migration

18. Climate breakdown and health
Climate breakdown and direct health effects : heat,
extreme weather events, air pollution, pandemic
risk, vector borne disease

19. Climate breakdown and health
Climate breakdown and direct health effects : heat,
and extreme weather events

20. The 1995 Chicago
heat wave led to
approximately 700
heat-related deaths in
Chicago over a period
of five days
France, August 2003
~14800 deaths (30,000+ in Europe)
Heatwave
deaths – the
early warnings

21. Climate breakdown and direct health effects : heat

22. More than 35% of the total heat deaths from 1990-2018 attributed to human-induced climate
change using data from 732 sites in 43 countries. No data for much of Africa and Asia
(Vicedo-Cabrera et al Nature Climate Change 2021).

23. Climate breakdown and direct health effects : heat
70% of 405 extreme weather events and trends were found to be made more likely or more severe by human-
caused climate change (Carbon Brief 2021).
-e.g. Siberian heat and fires in 2020- a I in ~ 90,000 year event in a pre-1900 climate, ‘almost impossible’ without
Climate Change (Ciavarella et al Climatic Change 2021)

24. Climate
breakdown
is here
now!- 1 fire

25. Increased wildfire risks to health from climate change.
https://sciencebrief.org/topics/climate-change-science/wildfires
Health effects --Xu et al NEJM 2020, 4 articles Lancet Planetary Health 2021.
marcus-kauffman--iretlQZEU4-unsplash-2
Wildfire particles are smaller than
those in particulate matter from
urban sources (i.e., with a higher
proportion of PM2.5 in PM10) and
may contain more oxidative and
proinflammatory components.
Chen G et al The Lancet Planetary Health 2021 5e579-e587DOI: (10.1016/S2542-5196(21)00200-X)

26. • Climate breakdown is
here now!- 2 floods
Indonesia
floods
Climate
breakdown is here
now!- 2 floods

27. Climate breakdown and health
Climate breakdown and direct health effects : air
pollution

28. Climate breakdown and direct health effects : air pollution

29. Climate breakdown and health
Climate breakdown and direct health effects :risk of
pandemics, and vector borne diseases

30. Climate breakdown and direct health effects :risk of pandemics

31. Climate breakdown and direct health effects :risk of pandemics

32. Melting permafrost – emergent threats to health.
Methuselah microorganisms and viruses have developed many adaptations
to survive in permafrost for millennia.
A representative Arctic permafrost system showing contaminants and
microorganisms corresponding to specific soil horizons (Miner et al Nature
Climate Change 2021)

33. Future risk of mosquito-borne disease in a hotter world
Colón-González et al., The Lancet Planet Health 2021

34. Across the nine countries
studied, by 2040, ambitious
NDCs that put health at the
centre of new climate policies
to meet the ‘well below 2°C’
goals of the Paris Agreement
could reduce annual deaths
due to air pollution by over 1.6
million, annual deaths due to
diet-related risk factors by over
6.4 million, and annual deaths
attributable to physical
inactivity by almost 2.1 million.
The public health benefits of the Paris Agreement
(Hamilton et al Lancet Planetary Health 2021)

35. Climate breakdown and health
Climate breakdown and direct health effects :
mental health effects, anxiety, depression, ‘climate
despair’, ‘climate futilitarianism’

36. Mental health effects of climate change (e.g. increases in common mental
disorders after extreme events, solastalgia and climate anxiety) and effective
responses increasingly documented.
RACGP (Image: David Mariuz)
https://www.who.int/health-topics/floods#tab=tab_1
(Photo by Pedro Paulo Xerente for the Fundação Nacional do Índio,
Brazil)

37. https://www.vice.
com/en/article/j5
w374/climate-
despair-is-making-
people-give-up-
on-life

38. Climate breakdown and health: The role of
education
Multidisciplinary
Inter-disciplinary
Life long
Health impact awareness in all policies and
programmes
Health community as global corporate citizens
Alert to the uses and abuses of the Information Age

39. Integrated climate action for health
image from https://www.calgary.ca/UEP/ESM/Pages/Energy-Savings/Climate-Change.aspx?redirect=/climateprogram

40. Reducing the carbon emissions from health care
--NHS England commits to net zero by 2040 for direct emissions and by 2045 for indirect
emissions

43. Climate breakdown and health: The role of education
Health and educational communities as global
corporate citizens

44. Climate breakdown and health: The role of education
ASPHER Actions in climate change and health
education :
Studies of ASPHER members involvement and
ASPHER executive’s carbon footprint
A Climate change and health education curriculum
(from the Global Consortium for Climate Change and
Health Education )
Unsuccessful bid for Jean Monet funding for short
course development ( unsuccessful but learning and
networking)
EU Health policy platform

45. Climate breakdown and health: The role of education
Health and educational communities as global corporate citizens

46. Climate Change and Health

47. Introduction
• Climate change has well-documented public health impacts
• Climate change is now a required competency for public health degree programs in
Europe and Australia
• Little research exists on employer perspectives on need for public health graduates with
climate change training
Main findings
• Skills/competencies required by surveyed employers align with climate and health
competencies from ASPHER, CAPHIA, and the Global Consortium on Climate and Health
Education
• Job market is small but growing
Is there a demand for graduates with training in
both climate change and public health?
Citation:
Krasna H, Czabanowska K, Jiang S, Khadka S, Morita H, Kornfeld J and Shaman J, The Future of Careers at the
Intersection of Climate Change and Public Health: What Can Job Postings and an Employer Survey Tell Us?
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (Feb. 2020)

49. Population Health Exposure:
• Health impact assessment
• GIS Mapping
• Risk assessment
• Pollution-health consequences,
causes and sources
• Scientific methods
• Epidemiological methods
Climate-Related Knowledge
• Knowledge of climate, carbon and
water cycles
• Climate modeling
• Climate change mitigation/adaptation
Statistics
• Statistical & epidemiological
analysis/software (SAS, R)
Other
• Communications/writing
• Climate justice/equity
• Financing/Budgeting/Economic
analysis
• Policy analysis
• Systems thinking/critical thinking
• Ecological/Agricultural/Geological/
Environmental knowledge
• Interdisciplinary understanding
• Marketing; advocacy
Key Skills Requested by Employers

52. Thank you
John Middleton,
President
Association of Schools of Public Health
In the European Region
John.middleton@aspher.org

53. Public health:
‘promoting health, preventing disease, prolonging life through
the organised efforts of society’
Sustainable development:
‘protecting resources from one generation to the next’
Environmental justice:
‘the pursuit of equal justice and equal protection under the law
for all environmental statutes and regulations without
discrimination based on race, ethnicity, and /or socioeconomic
status.’

54. What is ASPHER ?
The Association of Schools of Public Health in the European
Region (ASPHER) is the key independent European
organisation dedicated to strengthening the role of public
health by improving education and training of public health
professionals for both practice and research.
We have 120 member schools of public health in Europe and
associates globally.
We are developing our partnerships with sister public health
organisations in America, Africa, Asia, Australasia and the
Arab world