Harvard Medical School To Make ‘Climate Change’ A Focus Of Its Curriculum

Alexa Schwerha on February 6, 2023

Harvard Medical School (HMS) will modify its curriculum to embed climate change as a theme in its studies, the student newspaper the Harvard Crimson reported.

The new curriculum, voted on last month by the Educational Policy and Curriculum Committee at HMS, will examine how climate change impacts “health and health inequality,” how these impacts apply to clinical work and how healthcare workers can work to find climate solutions, the Crimson reported. The content will be incorporated into the M.D. curriculum already being taught at the medical school, rather than be used for new courses.

The curriculum is currently under development but will be ready on July 1, 2023 in time for the fall semester, Gaurab Basu, HMS climate and health curriculum theme director, told the Crimson.

“Every course director we’ve met with has been really supportive, enthusiastic, and we’ve been able to embed it into every course that we’ve attempted to in the first year of medical school,” he reportedly said.

Caleb J. Dresser, a Climate and Human Health fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health, told the Crimson that faculty and students have advocated to fold climate change themes into the school’s curriculum for “years.”

Now in @harvardmed curriculum: #climate change and its impacts on our #health

Spoke with @thecrimson: “more and more medical students and faculty members have started to engage with this issue”@GaurabBasuMDMPH @BIDMCEM @FXBHarvard @HarvardCCHANGE https://t.co/qyTNLWnE02

— Caleb Dresser MD MPH (@caleb_dresser) February 3, 2023

“This is an ongoing process,” he reportedly said. “It’s been developing for years, as more and more medical students and faculty members have started to engage with this issue and to see it as a really important context in which we are all practicing medicine.”

The initiative was partially led by the student organization Students for Environmental Awareness in Medicine.

HMS, Basu and Dresser did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment. Students for Environmental Awareness in Medicine and the Educational Policy and Curriculum Committee could not be reached for comment.

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