e-Learning: Climate Change and Health

About this course:

Climate change is an important topic for public health practice. As the frequency and severity of climate-related disasters increase, in order to protect health and well-being, the need to understand and prepare for unforeseeable events is rapidly growing. This course will provide participants with an overview of issues in relation to climate change and health in the context of public health practice. Furthermore, it introduces important concepts of how to tackle climate change related health impacts and how to support community preparedness, response, policy formulation and implementation.

What you'll learn:

Knowledge:

• The principles of public health and determinants of health
• The relationship between climate change and disasters
• The definition of different types of natural disaster and weather-related events, such as extreme weather event, drought, flood etc
• The association between the change of temperature and rainfall and the transmission of infectious diseases

Understanding:

• The overview of climate change, its causes and classification
• The global health burden and human health challenges related to climate change events
• The health risk perception and the common human behavioural patterns related to the climate change
• The policy implication for different adaptation and mitigation strategies related to the climate change

Skills:

• To identify the methods to measure the burden of disease attribute to climate change related event
• To interpret the biostatistics model and epidemiology studies that predicting the association between climate change and health outcomes
• To describe the strengths and weakness of these biostatistics models to assess future health risks
• To outline the potential strategies and public health action that can mitigate the adverse health impacts under the extreme weather events or climate-related disasters

Target audience:

The target audience for the course is individuals studying and working in health, policy, education and humanitarian sectors. Students may be civil servants, healthcare personnel, frontline disaster relief practitioners, and undergraduate or postgraduate students of closely-related disciplines. This online course will be available to anyone in the world.

Objectives:

• Understand and discuss climate change impact on health in the context of public health
• Understand key climate change events and existing studies and their link to public health related actions
• To explore what has been and can be done to minimize health impacts of climate change from public heath perspectives: adaptation and mitigation
• To introduce recent research findings and policies in relation to climate change and health

List of lectures:

1. Introduction to Climate change
2. Health challenges Related to the Impacts of Climate Change 1
3. Health challenges Related to the Impacts of Climate Change 2
4. Health challenges Related to the Impacts of Climate Change 3
5. Impacts of Climate Change On Communicable Diseases
6. Impacts of Climate Change on Non-Communicable Diseases
7. Response to Climate Change: Adaptation
8. Response to Climate Change: Mitigation

Assessment:

Two types of assessment in the course:

1. Short self-assessment quizzes to help students gauge their understanding of the course (Quiz 1-4), and
2. A longer final quiz to conclude the course. All questions are randomly drawn from a question bank. There is no upper limit to the number of attempts for all quizzes.

Students achieving 60% or higher in the final quiz will be issued a certificate of completion.

Upon completion of the e-learning modules, participants will receive an e-certificate of completion generated and verifiable by the e-learning platform. Those who have completed the e-learning modules in the first few weeks will receive a system-generated email by January 2016 regarding the issuance and download instructions of the e-certificate of completion.

Registration:

The 1st cohort of the course is now closed. The 2nd cohort is now open for registration and study on a first-come-first-served basis. Upon registration, students are allowed to study the course until 31 December 2016 at their own pace. A certificate of completion will be issued for participants who have successfully completed the course.

Apply online.