Climate Change and Health Education at Medical Schools in Colombia

Having acknowledged that climate change is a problem for all humanity and a threat to the health of human populations, it is important to find out how universities-those that have medicine programs in particular-are tackling this issue as part of their curricular plans. Past research has shown there is a great void in dealing with the subject matter of climate change in medical education, especially in countries that are more vulnerable to the effects of climate change, as is the case of Colombia. In order to evaluate the current state of this issue in the curricular plans of 59 medical schools across Colombia, a national survey was designed and sent to all universities that have a medical school and are active members of the Colombian Association of Medical Schools (ASCOFAME). Our findings show that, although more than half of the medical schools that answered the survey (53 %) have introduced climate change and health as a topic in their regular public health or epidemiology courses, they neither have set it as a priority in their curricula nor have qualified professionals to teach it and their governing bodies have not issued guidelines in this regard, which leads to the conclusion that the transfer of knowledge about this subject matter in Colombia is very limited indeed.