Assessing climate change and health provisions among staff in higher education institutions: A preliminary investigation

educational level were, per order, the following: 46.7% dissatisfied, 25.0% neutral, 12.5% highly dissatisfied, 12.5% satisfied, and 3.3% highly satisfied, revealing again, how this cycle of studies gets near the results obtained to the other cycles. and they are aligned with previous research showing concerns regarding the fact that educational actions need to be reinforced to increase awareness and comprehension among students [41]. It is possible to observe that the dissatis- faction level decreases with the level of education increase, from the BSc, master, to PhD, which makes sense, considering that higher education levels will correspond to a higher level of engagement and environmental awareness in this respect. In any case, the percentage corre- sponding to a high degree of satisfaction is extremely low, which highlights the need for further investment in training provisions involving climate change and health cross-cutting issues. These relative levels of dissatisfaction are aligned with concerns regarding the relatively low levels of investment to foster interdisciplinary research [42], which is a core component of research-based education in all educational levels and training approaches, either in develop- ing or developed countries. The respondents were also enquired about the main sources of information used for teach- ing/researching on climate change and health. The answers illustrate the diversity of opinions collected, from books, international reports/guides, IPCC reports, or scientific articles.

Enquired about the aspects already covered in the teaching and/or research developed by the respondents, the answers proved a wide scope of interests. Involving the same set of answers’ options and enquired about which of the aspects would the respondents like to have more training opportunities, the responses obtained were mostly distributed evenly. These answers show how eager the respondents are about acquiring knowl- edge that involves all issues related to climate change one way or the other, while, at the same time the climate change and global sustainability option of answer was selected representing an equal set of respondents percentage, for whom the chosen terminology represents it all there is to know about climate change, thus revealing a gap in knowledge at this respect, that need to be further addressed, as suggested by Leal Filho et al. [22, 23]. These results are detailed in Fig 3. The third and last section of the survey is focused on policy, research and training needs. It included four questions aimed to assess the areas where current initiatives on climate change and health are being seen in the respondents’ country, the barriers to the implementation of ini- tiatives on climate change and health in the respondents’ country, and the participant’s opinion regarding the impacts of climate change on human health in the respondents’ country. The answers to these questions are shown in Fig 4. These results are consistent with previous research, suggesting that relevant social groups may not be sufficiently targeted when design-

ing climate change and health related policies, or information strategies and campaigns, and contribute to better understand the reasons for these concerns [43–45]. Finally, to the question enquiring whether there are examples of specific policies on climate change impacts and health to be mentioned by the respondents, many of the respondents opt not to answer. However, 44.16% of participants have given specific examples, highlighting issues that should be improved in areas like implementation, policies and regulation, quantity and quality of information, education and training, and awareness/understanding or need of research. These findings illustrate the main areas for concern among citizens [46, 47]. At this respect, Table 2 includes statements from the participants aiming to illustrate specific contexts, within different countries, mostly from developing nations, in these cases, but not only. A final query in section three allowed the respondents to leave final remarks. 39.0% or par- ticipants leave some interesting comments regarding issues like education, awareness and understanding, stakeholder collaboration, regional or global networks. Table 3 illustrates the associated challenges reported. PLOS ONE Climate change and health in HEIs PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0304019 May 21, 2024 10 / 21