Teaching the relationship between health and climate change: a systematic scoping review protocol

The observed and projected impacts of climate change on human health are significant. While climate change has gathered global momentum and is taught frequently, the extent to which the relationships between climate change and health are taught remains uncertain. Education provides an opportunity to create public engagement on these issues, but the extent to which historical implementation of climate health education could be leveraged is not well understood. To address this gap, we propose to conduct a scoping review of all forms of teaching that have been used to illustrate the health effects of climate change between 2005 and 2017, coinciding with a turning point in the public health and climate change agendas following the 2005 Group of 7/8 (G7/8) Summit.

Using Arksey/O'Malley's and Levac's methodological framework, MEDLINE/PubMed, Embase, Scopus, Education Resource Information Centre, Web of Science, Global Health, Health Management Information Consortium, Georef, Ebsco and PROSPERO will be systematically searched. Predetermined inclusion and exclusion criteria will be applied by two independent reviewers to determine study eligibility. Studies published in English and after 2005 only will be examined. Following selection of studies, data will be extracted and analysed.

No ethical approval is required as exclusively secondary data will be used. Our findings will be communicated to the European Institute of Innovation & Technology Health-Knowledge and Innovation Communities to assist in the development of a FutureLearn Massive Open Online Course on the health effects of climate change.