Environment, Climate & Health

How the Environment and Climate Impact Health

Crystal globe on ground over blurred green nature background. environment concept.Ecology concept. Elements of this image furnished by NASA.

Unsustainable interactions with the environment are increasingly harming human health. How we use land, water, and wildlife can lead to emerging viral diseases, exposures to environmental toxins, reduced nutrition and livelihoods, and worsened mental health. In addition to highly visible storms and wildfire smoke, climate change also affects physical and mental health in less obvious ways, such as urban heat stress, exposures to mold and infectious diseases, and changes in food production and nutritional content. These impacts combine to dramatically reduce environmental and community resilience, driving disparities in health and wealth globally, from individual households to entire populations.

Both environmental degradation and disparities in subsequent health impacts demand public health champions to challenge the status quo and lead change that advances environmental sustainability and health equity. Students in the Environment, Climate & Health concentration will become such leaders of change. Critically, they will not only learn the downstream, harmful impacts of current behaviors, but will learn how to design, implement, and test interventions at both the local and global levels that promote inter-related human health and environmental health. Students will expand their toolkits by considering externalities and risks, elevating indigenous voices and lived experiences, working collaboratively, and making data-based decisions that recognize tradeoffs and future consequences.

What We Offer

Our MPH Program prepares students in the Environment, Climate & Health concentration to understand and respond to the negative impacts environmental change and climate change have on health. Through coursework and engaged projects our students learn to:

Goose floats on Beebe Lake on an Autumn afternoon.

Describe pathways of influence between the environment and health outcomes.
Apply systems thinking to depict a planetary health issue to critically consider reasonable and feasible strategies to advance justice, particularly with marginalized and at-risk populations.
Integrate multi-disciplinary perspectives to think critically about causes and leverage points for real-world health and environmental issues.
Use evidence to develop and promote upstream strategies to prevent and manage deleterious health impacts.
Propose and practice methods for movement building and systems change.

Environment, Climate & Health Curriculum

In addition to the MPH core curriculum, students in the Environment, Climate & Health concentration will take the following concentration-specific courses:

Health, Wellbeing, and the Environment

The purpose of this course is to introduce students to the interconnections between the health and wellbeing of individuals, communities and the environment; this is the foundation of an evidence-based approach to environmental health and sustainability. The course will cover concepts linking health and wellbeing across scales from individuals to ecosystems, as well as methods to assess and prevent or respond to environmental health challenges. The course learnings will be illustrated and reinforced by diverse case studies, including notably issues related to land use, infectious diseases, chemical pollution, nature connectedness, and a robust module on the process of zoonotic spillover from reservoir host ecology, environmental change, pathogen dynamics, human behavior, to factors that determine human compatibility and susceptibility to certain pathogens, to early outbreak dynamics.

Over the semester, students will analyze several case studies, and explore an environmental health project, from the identification of the problem or opportunity, to health assessment design, and communication aimed at engaging communities and/or institutions in solution-finding.

Planetary Health

The goal of this course is to develop an understanding of planetary health and skills to analyze planetary health problems and solutions. Students will gain an understanding of the importance of the complexity of planetary health challenges, the urgency of addressing health and environmental problems, and the importance of evidence to design effective solutions. The course will introduce the dimensions of environmental change that are causing environmental degradation, such as habitat destruction, biodiversity loss, and climate change, and the connections to population health, including related to food systems, infectious disease, chronic disease and mental health. Students will also build skills analyzing planetary health cases by both presenting cases and participating in discussions. In addition, we will review win-win solutions to environment-health issues for their evidence quality, feasibility, and acceptability, and we will examine different stakeholder perspectives on these issues.

Health Impact Assessment

Public health and community leaders seek to identify policy or program alternatives that will help to better address a need or gap, as a step towards building health equity and justice. More and more, the role of–and human interactions with–built and natural environments are considered when seeking innovations to improve human and ecosystem health. Health impact assessments can be a useful tool, “a means of assessing the health impacts of policies, plans and projects in diverse economic sectors using quantitative, qualitative and participatory techniques” (World Health Organization). The course will introduce students to the 4+2 steps that are used to consider and conduct a health impact assessment, and will work to consider fit and feasibility of this approach, develop organizational capacity to implement the approach, and practice implementation with a real world/real-world-like project.

Leading Change for Health Equity, Sustainability, and Justice

Issues related to health equity, sustainability, social and environmental justice are considered complex or wicked problems. To understand and begin to address these, a strategic leadership toolkit is needed. Week-by-week, this seminar will help build that toolkit. This course will review what wicked problems are, how change happens, and the roles that public health leaders play; it will revisit methods used to rapidly assess and evaluate the current state, and compare that to the ideal (future) state. Students will practice compiling an evidence base for use to inform actions, and practice professional writing (white papers) and oral pitches. Students will define a project scope, develop a work plan, conduct a literature review, draft a project report outline, identify and access relevant data, review data to inform action, and develop a project report that could or will be submitted to a ‘client’. Generating a significant document through this course serves as an Integrated Learning Experience for students in the Environment, Climate, and Health Track.

Student walking on campus amid blooming cherry trees

Diverse Career Pathways

Graduates from the Environment, Climate & Health concentration can pursue a wide range of positions in government, public, and private sectors. Students will be prepared for multiple potential roles including:

Project management and support for local or global climate and environment initiatives
Designing and evaluating interventions to mitigate the health impacts of climate change
Communication, public outreach, or education on climate and health topics.
Data analysis to show the impact environment and climate issues have on health
Consulting to support integration of environment, climate, and health considerations into diverse projects
Advocacy and lobbying to increase support for environment, climate, and health projects
Policy analysis to support the development of sustainable policies

Additionally, some students choose to pursue further training in medical or research fields, and integrate their understanding of environmental impacts on health into healthcare or research careers. In whichever career pathway they choose, the skills students develop in systems thinking, cross-sector collaboration, identifying environmental drivers and leverage points for improving public health, listening to local voices and knowledge, developing evidence-based interventions, and clearly articulating their ideas, make them highly sought-after as leaders for change.