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

across the world and 26% of deaths of children under the age of 5 [6]. Climate change is increasing the burden of climate-sensitive health determinants and outcomes for the global population, with the most vulnerable groups being children, the elderly, people with preexist- ing health conditions, outdoor workers, people of color, and people with low income. Children are at a higher risk due to their potentially greater exposures to climate-induced health risks, greater sensitivity, their dependence on caregivers [7, 8], physical, physiologic, and cognitive immaturity [9, 10]. Acknowledging the impact of a drastically changing climate, its effects on earth as well as concern for its anthropological causes, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change [UNFCCC] introduced nearly three decades ago, [11] recognizes education as a cru- cial way to address the challenges of climate change on an international scale [11, 12]—as such, the UNFCCC lays the foundation for climate change education as it is seen today [13]. In today’s general consensus, climate change is no longer seen simply as merely a scientific phe- nomenon but regarded as “a complex climate socio-scientific issue” [14] [p. 68]. Early child development and education has been proven to be pivotal, not only to health in childhood and later life of an individual, but also impactful on a societal level [15]. Early educa- tion possibly ameliorates issues of health inequities, through enabling protection against adverse exposures during childhood thereby potentially reducing health inequity in adulthood

[15]. Given the strong link between education and the health of younger generations [16], schools play a vital role, especially primary education, as they reach children at a development stage. At this age-period, children start expressing behavior and attitude, which may be poten- tially impactful for their future health [15, 17]. To this end, schools are a convenient location to offer health education, either embedded in scientific subjects, physical education or as spe- cific health courses [18]. Both mitigation and adaptation are essential in minimizing the impact of climate change on health [5]. Mitigating the climate change impacts can have direct and immediate health benefits whereas adaptation is necessary as it will decrease and avoid diseases, health-care expenditure and lost productivity [2]. Hence, addressing climate change would be highly advantageous pertaining to global health by reducing emissions and cooling temperatures through changes in the built environment [5, 19]. Climate change education combines the sci- entific basics of climate change with a broader view on the interconnectedness between climate and multiple parts of human societies [20] and equips its learners with both combined mitiga- tion and adaptation capabilities [3, 14, 21]. In doing so, climate change education aims to enable people across societies to make informed decisions; incite attitude and behavior changes [22, 23] and gain essential skills to mitigate and adapt to climate change [10, 20, 21] and thus equip them with “climate literacy” [20, 24].

Taking into account the adverse effects of climate impacts on health, there are emerging attempts to build momentum to shift “climate literacy” to “climate and health literacy” as recent research is increasingly emphasizing the need that health professionals, governments, businesses and the general public proactively address both climate change and its implication for public health [19, 25–27]. However, existing educational frameworks still fail to adequately prepare students, are limited to health professionals and include limited content coverage and perspective [27]. A broader educational agenda at all levels of education system as a crucial component of the global response to climate change is proposed [26–28] with schools being the most common setting identified in existing literature for the promotion of climate and health education [29–31]. Limaye et al. [2020] proposes a definition for climate and health lit- eracy by adapting the US climate literacy principles. They define a climate and health literate individual as one that “can recognize direct and indirect linkages between climate change and health, communicate risks, assess data, comprehend uncertainty, and make informed and PLOS ONE Climate change and health in school-based education: A scoping review protocol PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0282431 March 1, 2023 2 / 7