Climate change and health in school-based education: A scoping review protocol

STUDY PROTOCOL Climate change and health in school-based education: A scoping review protocol Lira RamadaniID1*, Sudeepa Khanal1, Melanie Boeckmann2 1 Faculty of Health Sciences, Universita¨tsstraße Bielefeld, Bielefeld, Germany, 2 University of Bremen, Faculty of Human and Health Sciences, Mary-Somerville, Bremen, Germany * l.ramadani@uni-bielefeld.de Abstract Taking into account the adverse impacts of climate change on human health, the impor- tance of increasing knowledge and gaining essential skills is necessary to mitigate and adapt to its impacts and protect human health. Researchers and experts are urging for more research in the climate-health nexus, as well as calling for efforts that establish climate and health educational goals. They encourage the development of agreed upon, articulated sci- ence-based curricula and resources addressing climate-health issues. This review aims to map out the current state of integration of climate change education in school-based educa- tion across the world and identify the human health topics included. Furthermore, it aims to explore the extents to which levels of prevention and health co-benefits of climate mitigation and adaptation are covered within the framework of school-based climate change educa- tion. Five electronic databases will be searched for peer reviewed articles in English, from year 2000-to May 2022. The findings from the study will be useful to school curricula devel- opers looking to expand climate change education. This review will also highlight potential

research gaps in education on climate change-related health in schools. The scoping review was preregistered with the Open Science Framework [registration DOI: https://doi.org/10. 17605/OSF.IO/8U5GK]. 1. Introduction The levels of greenhouse gases have been increasing since the early industrial revolution, mainly due to manmade activities such as growing burning of fossil fuels along with increases in deforestation, animal husbandry, irrigated agriculture and cement manufacture [1]. Climate change is causing temperature increase, hydrologic cycle changes, sea level rises, more frequent extreme weather events and heat events [2]. These weather and climatic changes will conse- quently impact the incidence and geographic spread of climate-sensitive vector-, food-, and waterborne diseases, and increase diseases associated with air pollution and aeroallergens [3, 4]. Poor air quality and hot weather due to climate change are becoming a major public health concern as there is an increasing excess of morbidity and mortality cases related to them [1, 5]. WHO estimated that modifiable environmental factors are responsible for 23% of deaths PLOS ONE PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0282431 March 1, 2023 1 / 7 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 OPEN ACCESS Citation: Ramadani L, Khanal S, Boeckmann M (2023) Climate change and health in school-based education: A scoping review protocol. PLoS ONE 18(3): e0282431. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal. pone.0282431 Editor: Ozlem Boybeyi-Turer, Hacettepe University: Hacettepe Universitesi, TURKEY

Received: January 2, 2023 Accepted: February 15, 2023 Published: March 1, 2023 Copyright: © 2023 Ramadani et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Data Availability Statement: No datasets were generated or analysed during the current study. All relevant data from this study will be made available upon study completion. Funding: The author(s) received no specific funding for this work. Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.