Environmental Literacy for Health Professionals

What is environmental literacy, and why should health professionals incorporate it into their education and practice? As the climate crisis poses increased environmental health risks to individuals and institutions, health professionals are in a unique position to respond and act. One way is to increase environmental literacy.

What is environmental literacy?

The concept of environmental ‘literacy’ was conceived when the environmental movement of the mid-20th century brought to light the threat that industrial activities posed to human flourishing. Understanding the problem and developing solutions would require a skilled (i.e., environmentally literate) global citizenry.

Components of environmental literacy

Debates have since unfolded regarding which specific skills are required to understand and solve environmental problems: in other words, what constitutes environmental literacy, and what a comprehensive environmental education should therefore consist of. Despite various differences, in implementing environmental literacy programs, environmental educators have largely converged on seven major components:

  • Affect: The desire and capacity to make nuanced, ethical, and responsible assessments regarding environmental problems and their solutions. 
  • Ecological Knowledge: An understanding of natural systems and ecological concepts such as ecosystems, biogeochemical cycles, and interdependence.
  • Socio-political knowledge: An understanding of socio-political and economic systems and their influence on people’s ecologically significant activities and values.
  • Knowledge of environmental issues: An understanding of the variety of environmental problems and indicators, as well as their relationship with human institutions.
  • Cognitive skills: Intellectual capacities for identifying and analysing problems and developing and implementing solutions.
  • Environmentally responsible behaviours (ERB): Participation in solving environmental problems and practising an environmentally friendly lifestyle.
  • Additional determinants of ERB: The belief that one can and should seek to effect change.

Summarized from Table 1 in McBride et al. (2013); originally adapted from Simmons (1995).

Ecological literacy and ecoliteracy

By contrast, ecological literacy and ecoliteracy place greater focus on, respectively, ecological science and holistic sustainability. Some have argued that the three literacies together represent distinct intellectual currents working with different methods towards similar goals, while others consider environmental literacy an umbrella term that encompasses several offshoots.

Why is environmental literacy important for health professionals?

Every human being should be environmentally literate for two reasons: first because we inhabit the Earth and depend on its systems, and second because we have become a planetary force of our own. We are resident-stewards who must not only respond to change but also effect it in a beneficial way. In short, good citizenship of the Earth demands environmental literacy.

Primarily through burning fossil fuels, industrialized societies are unleashing ancient carbon into the atmosphere, where it traps heat from the Sun and thereby warms the Earth’s surface. Even according to the most optimistic scenario published by the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change, end-century global average temperatures are projected to exceed pre-industrial levels by almost 2°C. While some groups and regions may benefit, the net effect on humanity is significantly negative. Well underway already are rising sea levels, ocean acidification, mass extinctions, and the displacement of populations. Environmental literacy empowers people to respond to such challenges by mitigating damages (e.g., building resilient infrastructure), adjusting their lifestyles (e.g., reducing beef consumption), and addressing root causes (e.g., deploying renewable energy).

Health professionals, in addition, play a uniquely important role in responding to environmental risk. The reasons are again twofold and reciprocal: on the one hand, the climate crisis is worsening human health, and on the other, healthcare systems are worsening the climate crisis.

Extreme heat and precipitation events are increasing in frequency, contributing to heat-related illness, cardiovascular failure, and injuries from flooding. Global warming is causing vector-borne diseases like West Nile fever and Lyme disease to spread at higher rates in wider geographical ranges. Air pollution associated with exposure to particulate matter from fossil-fuel emissions already causes up to one in five deaths globally. In all, the World Health Organization estimates that more than 150,000 deaths annually are attributable to climate change. Health professionals will therefore increasingly need to communicate heightened environmental health risks to individuals and institutions—enabling them to make informed decisions—and to adapt clinical practice and public health policy in response.

At the same time, healthcare systems collectively constitute a major polluter and greenhouse gas emitter, causing 4.4% of global annual greenhouse gas emissions—2 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, which is more than Russia’s total annual emissions—via direct and indirect pathways. Resource inefficiencies in hospitals, healthcare specialities, and medical supply chains mean that present care endangers future health. Reforming healthcare systems to become sustainable is therefore morally imperative, and will require input and innovation from health professionals ranging from clinicians to public health leaders.

How can health professionals develop and promote environmental literacy?

Health professionals can cultivate their own environmental literacy through self-study of environmental literacy resources and continuing professional development, including by taking short courses offered by the Centre for Sustainable Healthcare (CSH). CSH courses include: 

CSH additionally runs the Sustainable Specialty Fellowship, whereby clinicians can undertake original research into long-term sustainable reform of their own specialties. Health professionals can also adopt the Sustainability in Quality Improvement framework (SusQI) when instigating quality improvement. SusQI serves as a guiding approach to holistic healthcare reform, aiming to improve patient and population outcomes while accounting for a triple bottom line of environmental, social, and financial impacts.

To promote environmental literacy in other health professionals, medical educators and schools can integrate sustainable healthcare principles into curricula across medical and other health professional schools. The UCSF School of Pharmacy has already piloted an elective course in planetary health, while medical students at the University of Leeds have developed an extracurricular carbon literacy training program. Beyond the healthcare sector, health professionals can spread environmental literacy in their function as healers and educators who interface with and command the trust of every segment of society. Environmental changes will affect our health, but so too can healthcare reforms change the environment.

Author: 

James huJames Hu

James is an environmental science and premedical undergraduate at the University of Chicago. He’s interested in global and planetary health, planetary science research, and environmental education.