Education

SPH Debuts New Climate and Health Certificate

With the addition, MPH students may now choose from nine contextual areas of study. Amruta Nori-Sarma, the new certificate’s director, answers questions current and prospective MPH students might have about the program.

Nearly every corner of the world and every facet of life on Earth has been—or will be—touched by climate change. Threats including extreme heat, poor air quality, wildfires, flooding, emerging infectious diseases, and human displacement already number among the most pressing global health problems of the 21^st century.

The School of Public Health recognizes that the public health practitioners of tomorrow will play a vital role in understanding and addressing both the direct threats to life and limb posed by climate change as well as its indirect effects, such as the exacerbation of mental health issues and health inequities. To equip students with the perspective and skillset needed to address these complex, interdisciplinary challenges, the School’s Master of Public Health (MPH) program debuted a new 12-credit contextual certificate on climate and health this fall.

With the addition, MPH students may now choose from nine different contextual areas of study. Designed to complement a student’s functional area of study, context certificates offer both a dedicated curriculum and a selection of functional area courses covering related topics and relevant skills. Students who enroll in the new Climate and Health certificate will complete three courses covering the fundamentals of the field, the vulnerable populations most at risk, and the design of solutions that both protect and promote health. Students may then choose to supplement courses on disaster management, emergency preparedness, geographic information systems, and health risk assessment.

“When applying to MPH programs, I searched for schools that prioritized climate health and was excited to learn BUSPH identified climate, the planet, and health as one of their strategic research areas. Then, on Accepted Students’ Day, I learned about the new Climate and Health certificate, and I immediately knew BUSPH was the right choice for me,” says Lily Rosa, who was one of the first students to enroll in the new certificate.

Yujin Kang also expressed her excitement at finding a perfect match. “Being an MPH candidate for the environmental health functional certificate at BUSPH, it was a no-brainer to add on the climate and health contextual certificate. Not only do I get to learn about how our environment impacts our health but in a context specific to climate change,” Kang says.

Amruta Nori-Sarma, assistant professor in the Department of Environmental Health and the new certificate’s director, says that student interest and the popularity of existing courses on climate and health at SPH were among the main drivers of the push to offer the new certificate.

“BUSPH has become a hub for climate change and health work more broadly and it was important that be reflected in the curricula that we are offering our students,” says Nori-Sarma. Below she answers some common questions about the program for current and prospective MPH students considering enrolling.

What inspired the addition of the climate and health context certificate to SPH’s MPH program?

In recent years we have seen a growing body of climate change and health work from practitioners in the US and around the globe. There has been a lot of interest in better understanding the ways in which climate change influences people’s health and in developing solutions and policies to reduce those health impacts of climate exposures. [SPH] noted that there are research-focused programs with a climate change and health lens, such as the Master of Science in Climate and Health program, but on the practice side, our MPH curriculum did not yet have a cohesive climate change and health program, despite growing interest among students in the courses we already offer on the subject.

How does this certificate differ from the Master of Science in Climate and Health?

The Master of Science in Climate and Health program is focused on approaching research questions, whereas the MPH program is intended to train public health practitioners with a climate perspective. For example, [MPH] students in the Environmental Health functional certificate may be taking relevant courses like Toxicology and Risk Assessment within the Department of Environmental Health, but they may also want to specifically understand the ways climate exposures impact the different types of health impact assessment or exposure assessment work they will be doing in the field as part of their practical careers. On the same hand, folks who are in the Community Assessment, Program Design, Implementation, and Evaluation functional certificate may want to specifically understand how to design effective interventions to reduce the impact of climate exposures within different communities. The MPH in Climate and Health is a contextual certificate designed to supplement many functional areas with an understanding of the impacts climate change may have across disciplines.

Could you describe the curriculum offered through the climate and health certificate? What core concepts students can expect to learn?

We offer three bespoke courses focused on climate change and health, which is really an attractive offering of our particular program. We have the introduction to Climate Change and Public Health course taught by Professor Patrick Kinney; I teach the Climate Change and Health Equity course; and then, Jonathan Buonocore, who started on our faculty last year, will be teaching a course this spring [called] Incorporating Health to Design Healthy Climate Solutions.

With these three courses, what we are offering is a really holistic perspective. In the introduction to climate change course, we address questions such as: What is the problem? How does it manifest in exposures? And then, how do those exposures lead to adverse health outcomes? In my course on health equity, we discuss how, although climate change is impacting everybody, it impacts some people more than others. We address questions such as: Who are the people most vulnerable? What leads to that elevated vulnerability and puts people at increased risk? And then, how do we appropriately develop and tailor solutions to try to equitably reduce the negative health outcomes associated with climate change? Finally, in [Buonocore’s] course, we address how to mitigate climate change in ways that actually promote health.

In what ways is SPH already a hub of climate and health scholarship? How will the certificate program collaborate with other centers at SPH to enhance the student experience?

Our new Center for Climate Change and Health, led by Gregory Wellenius, provides a lot of resources to folks who are interested in doing research or practica around climate change and health. The Center also has a lot of different events, including social opportunities, seminars, and guest lecturers. So, there are a lot of opportunities for students interested in climate and health to participate in Center activities. I am also one of the three MPIs of the new CAFÉ NIH Research Coordinating Center on Climate Change and Health. CAFÉ is co-led by me, Greg Wellenius, and Professor Francesca Dominici at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The joint center is intended to build out the community of practice around climate and health, so there are a lot of activities focused on capacity building, outreach, and communication. We will soon have opportunities for students to join CAFÉ for their practicum experiences, and there will be other opportunities for students to work directly with CAFÉ doing work around community building. Finally, we have faculty across SPH and more broadly across BU whose research aims to understand and address climate change and its impacts on health.

What types of career opportunities would students who select a context certificate in climate and health have?

This is a new certificate this spring, so we have not yet had students graduate from the program, but we have had students who have been very interested in climate and health and have gone on to be successful applying the work they did in the MPH program at BU to their careers. A good example is Lilly Nichols, who went on to work with the Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation on the Extreme Heat Resilience Alliance, where they identify and name heatwaves in addition to putting out other types of messages to convey to the public the dangers posed by extreme heat exposure.

I had a student who researched air pollution exposure from wildfires and mental health among pregnant women with the end result being an infographic used by several health departments. We also had practicum student collaborators and students working at the Center for Climate and Health who went on to PhD programs. So we have an array of successful graduates, and we expect the community is just going to expand. We hope that students coming out of this certificate will go on and provide support to local departments of health and other organizations for preventative activities going on to reduce the impact of other important climate exposures, like new disease vectors and extreme flooding, to give just a few examples.

What would you say to prospective climate and health certificate students?

This is an exciting time to be focusing on climate change and health. We have a lot of information about the dangers posed by climate change to human health, but we also have a lot of people who are working to try to expand our capacity to cope with the challenges that climate change poses now and in the future.

Now is a really good time to be adding this to your toolkit for public health practice, and BU is a really great place to be doing that. It is a strategic priority for the school, and it certainly has a lot of support within the EH department and within our programs. I think coming to BU, if this is an area of interest for you, just seems like a no-brainer. It is really a place where a lot is happening, and you can have a meaningful impact.

Correction: In an earlier version of this story, Yujin Kang was mistakenly referred to by the incorrect pronouns. The editorial team has corrected the story and deeply apologizes for this error.