Integrating climate change and planetary health into medical education in Australia and New Zealand

Including new content and achieving change in curricula can be difficult. Medical schools often have limited resources and curriculum change requires resourcing. There were also few medical educators with an understanding of the health impacts of climate change and broader planetary health concepts. Collaboration created a community of practice that combined scarce human resources, stimulated a dialogue and facilitated information sharing between medical schools. This common understanding also formed the basis for advocacy for the inclusion of the health impacts of climate change and planetary health in the accreditation standards for medical schools. It also informed contributions to the consultation for the revision of the accreditation standards for junior doctors which was also occurring at this time.(4,5)

This highlights what can be achieved through collaboration of health professional educators seeking to strengthen education about the health impacts of climate change and planetary health. It also highlights how accreditation standards for health professional education create the sustained focus required to drive and secure the necessary system-level change to prepare medical graduates and other health professionals to practise environmentally sustainable health care. Otherwise, change can remain voluntary and fragmented and easily disrupted by a lack of resources or enthusiasm or loss of committed personnel. National health strategies can reinforce the essential role of capacity building for an appropriately skilled health workforce and of accreditation standards for the health professions to achieve this. Consultation processes provide an opportunity to shape and influence strategy and policy, and collaboration can also enable participation in these processes.