Is environmental sustainability training fundamental to healthcare leadership? State of the art with health students and health leaders
Abstract
This paper addresses the relevance of climate change and environmental learning in health professional training. Recent publications have shown the importance of understanding sustainability and environmental issues in healthcare management. Indeed, after years of underestimation, medical and public health professionals today acknowledge that the environment has a strong effect on human health. Conducted between April and June 2021, a quantitative study among 3,384 French medical and health students shows that the need for training on energy and climate issues is urgent and crucial. The findings are consistent with the international literature. The contrast is sharp between students’ expectations about environmental skills and the reality of the available course offer. Learning about energy, climate and environment is currently not a priority in the curriculum of healthcare professionals, including managers. Sustainability, however, clearly appears as a ‘must’ among the essentials in healthcare leadership. What these findings suggest is that healthcare managers can no longer afford to ignore environmental sustainability as an essential skills domain in their long-term capacity to contribute to the necessary healthcare environmental adaptation, mitigation and resilience.
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Author's Biography
Marine Sarfati , MD, MSc, is a French rheumatologist. She has overseen the teaching of Environment Health at the University of Medicine Lyon Est since 2022 and has organised a 45-hour course on this theme at the university for medical students. She was mandated in 2022 by the French National Council of Deans to create a 6-hour online course over the links between Environmental and Climate Issues and human health for all the French medical students.
Alessia Lefébure , PhD, is the Dean of L’institut Agro Rennes Angers, a French University part of the largest French Life Science, Agriculture and Food ensemble, in Higher Education and Research. She previously held several managerial and teaching positions at the French School for Public Health (EHESP), Columbia University, in New York; Tsinghua University, in Beijing; and Sciences Po Paris. A sociologist and a recognised expert in Comparative Higher Education Policies, Alessia is the author of the book ‘Globalization of the Chinese Higher Education’ (Les mandarins 2.0. Presses de Sciences Po, Paris, 2020).
Cyrille Harpet has been a teacher-researcher at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Santé Publique de Rennes (EHESP) since 2010. His work focuses on risk analysis in occupational health and environment. He has followed an interdisciplinary path in philosophy of science, social anthropology and biological anthropology. Trained in environmental management, Cyrille continued his activities in urban planning and environmental health and currently in climate change and public health risks.
Estelle Baurès is Environmental Health researcher (PhD, HDR) and Sustainability and social responsibility Dean at Institut Agro. She pilots the inclusion of ecological transition and sustainable development issues in institution global strategy and in the curricula of all students. Her research, teaching and consulting also focus on environment quality and global and climate changes in a risk assessment context in the field of environmental health. Currently, Estelle is also a member of the CIRSES (national network of higher education sustainable development leaders) board of directors.
Laurie Marrauld , PhD, is a lecturer at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Santé Publique (EHESP) specialising in the use of digital technologies in health. She is a teacher and a researcher in management sciences and focuses her research on the transformation of healthcare organisations in the context of ecological, epidemiological, demographic and socio-technical transition. Since 2019, Laurie has been piloting the ‘decarbonizing health for sustainable care’ project of the French Economic Transformation Plan within the think tank The Shift Project.
Citation
Sarfati, Marine, Lefébure, Alessia, Harpet, Cyrille, Baurès, Estelle and Marrauld, Laurie (2023, September 1). Is environmental sustainability training fundamental to healthcare leadership? State of the art with health students and health leaders. In the Management in Healthcare: A Peer-Reviewed Journal, Volume 8, Issue 1. https://doi.org/10.69554/BUMF6682.
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