Abstract
Climate change is acknowledged to be a major risk to public health. Skills and competencies related to climate change are becoming a part of the curriculum at schools of public health and are now a competency required by schools in Europe and Australia. However, it is unclear whether graduates of public health programs focusing on climate change are in demand in the current job market. The authors analyzed current job postings, 16 years worth of job postings on a public health job board, and survey responses from prospective employers. The current job market appears small but there is evidence from job postings that it may be growing, and 91.7% of survey respondents believe the need for public health professionals with training in climate change may grow in the next 5–10 years. Current employers value skills/competencies such as the knowledge of climate mitigation/adaptation, climate-health justice, direct/indirect and downstream effects of climate on health, health impact assessment, risk assessment, pollution-health consequences and causes, Geographic Information System (GIS) mapping, communication/writing, finance/economics, policy analysis, systems thinking, and interdisciplinary understanding. Ensuring that competencies align with current and future needs is a key aspect of curriculum development. At the same time, we recognize that while we attempt to predict future workforce needs with historical data or surveys, the disruptive reality created by climate change cannot be modeled from prior trends, and we must therefore adopt new paradigms of education for the emerging future.
Highlights
Climate change is acknowledged to be a major threat to public health [1,2]
Other articles mention the training needs of governmental public health workers relating to climate change [46], or specific sub-areas of training such as nutrition [47], or the importance of communication [48], or focus generally on why climate change training is needed in public health education [49]
One Health Competency Domains including management, communication and informatics, values and ethics, leadership, team and collaboration, roles and responsibilities, and systems thinking. These skills appear to be in alignment with the competencies proposed by ASPHER, CAPHIA, and the Global Consortium on Climate and Importantly, the scope and framing of this study focused primarily on the role of educational institutions in preparing graduates to solve the problems of today, and to meet the demands of today’s employers
Summary
Climate change is acknowledged to be a major threat to public health [1,2]. Just as public health practice must constantly adapt to emerging viral outbreaks, non-communicable diseases, or other health threats, it must be prepared for the diverse threats to human health posed by climate change. Several reports and large-scale commissions [3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10] point to the need for training for the health workforce, including the public health workforce, in skills and content to help lead efforts to mitigate and manage the impacts of climate change on health. Res. Public Health 2020, 17, 1310; doi:10.3390/ijerph17041310 www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph
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