Climate Change, Planetary Health, and Medicine

2024 Course Overview

Information for the 2025 course is not yet available.

Climate change is a threat to the patients we care for in health care. This course will be an opportunity for practicing health professionals to learn about the mechanisms by which climate change impacts human health and how it influences diagnosis, counseling and treatment plans. It will additionally describe the impacts of climate changes on the health care delivery system itself and how health care professionals can make change to address this public health threat. The course will be organized to touch upon climate impacts on a diversity of health conditions and disease processes and will be valuable to health care providers of all fields. 

Who Should Attend

• Specialty Physicians
• Physician Assistants
• Nurse Practitioners
• Primary Care Physicians 

Learning Objectives

Upon completion of this activity, participants will be able to:

• Explain the ways by which climate change impacts human health through environmental exposure pathways including natural disasters/extreme weather, changes in water quality and quantity, food insecurity, heat stress, air pollution and vector borne infections.
• Describe the impact of climate change, air pollution, and ecological degradation on health outcomes including cardiovascular, respiratory, reproductive, neurologic, immunologic, psychiatric, oncologic and infectious disease processes. 
• Identify risks for disease emergence, especially zoonoses, that arise from ecological degradation in the form of deforestation, land use changes, pollution and biodiversity loss.
• Demonstrate capacity to take a clinical history of environmental exposure risks related to occupation, residence, local environmental hazards and indoor pollutants.
• Develop clinical prevention and treatment plans for extreme heat and air pollution exposure based upon identification of at-risk patients, including patients with underlying morbidities and inequitable social determinants of health.
• Anticipate and establish plans to address excess burdens of psychiatric disease that arise from climate-change-influenced extreme weather events such as heat waves, wildfires, more severe hurricanes and flooding.
• Describe the intersection of climate change, environmental health and health equity.
• Discuss the ways climate change impacts the delivery of health care and related solutions.