Abstract
Background: Climate change is a major public health threat for humanity. Over the coming decades, morbidity and mortality are expected to increase, particularly in vulnerable communities, due to increased heat, poor air quality, undernutrition, and vector-borne diseases. To care for populations who reside in these communities, undergraduate and graduate nursing students must be educated, which requires integrating climate change topics into the nursing curriculum.
Purpose: We piloted a course module about climate change and health and tested its effectiveness as a tool for educating nursing students.
Methods: Using a pre-post intervention design, 192 undergraduate and graduate nursing students enrolled in the health policy course during fall 2020 were invited to complete the Climate, Health, and Nursing Tool (CHANT) survey with the required course module on climate change and health. The module included topic-related articles, a chapter from the Environmental Health and Nursing textbook, a video presentation using the Nurses Climate Challenge short presentation, and a discussion assignment. Paired t-tests compared pre-post climate health awareness on each CHANT subscale and overall scores. Data were evaluated using two-tailed tests at alpha level .05.
Results: The majority of the 72 students who completed the pre and post CHANT surveys were female, White, and worked in acute care. The overall CHANT and subscales (awareness, motivation, home behaviors, and work behaviors) (p< 0.001) showed statistically significant pre-to-post score differences, except for the subscale concern, which showed no significant change.
Limitations: Conducting this study during the Covid-19 pandemic made making immediate changes in teaching content and methodology difficult. The sample’s demographic similarity could have influenced the results.
Conclusions/Implications for Practice: The CHANT survey provided a simple way to measure students’ awareness of climate change and its impact on health. The course module increased students’ awareness but not concern about climate change, suggesting that their knowledge increased but there was limited critical thinking to generate a change in the concern subscale. Future iterations should employ critical thinking teaching methodology with live discussions and case studies.
Notes
Reference list included in attached slide deck.
Sigma Membership
Delta Rho at-Large
Type
Presentation
Format Type
Text-based Document
Study Design/Type
Other
Research Approach
Pilot/Exploratory Study
Keywords:
Climate Change -- Education, Nursing Students, Public Health, Nursing Education, Curriculum, World Health
Recommended Citation
Granda-Cameron, Clara and Whitfield-Harris, Lisa, "Transforming Academic Nursing: Educating Nurses on the Health Challenges of Climate Change" (2026). Creating Healthy Work Environments (CHWE). 110.
https://www.sigmarepository.org/chwe/2024/presentations_2024/110
Conference Name
Creating Healthy Work Environments
Conference Host
Sigma Theta Tau International
Conference Location
Washington, DC, USA
Conference Year
2024
Rights Holder
All rights reserved by the author(s) and/or publisher(s) listed in this item record unless relinquished in whole or part by a rights notation or a Creative Commons License present in this item record. All permission requests should be directed accordingly and not to the Sigma Repository. All submitting authors or publishers have affirmed that when using material in their work where they do not own copyright, they have obtained permission of the copyright holder prior to submission and the rights holder has been acknowledged as necessary.
Review Type
Abstract Review Only: Reviewed by Event Host
Acquisition
Proxy-submission
Date of Issue
2026-02-26
Transforming Academic Nursing: Educating Nurses on the Health Challenges of Climate Change
Washington, DC, USA
Background: Climate change is a major public health threat for humanity. Over the coming decades, morbidity and mortality are expected to increase, particularly in vulnerable communities, due to increased heat, poor air quality, undernutrition, and vector-borne diseases. To care for populations who reside in these communities, undergraduate and graduate nursing students must be educated, which requires integrating climate change topics into the nursing curriculum.
Purpose: We piloted a course module about climate change and health and tested its effectiveness as a tool for educating nursing students.
Methods: Using a pre-post intervention design, 192 undergraduate and graduate nursing students enrolled in the health policy course during fall 2020 were invited to complete the Climate, Health, and Nursing Tool (CHANT) survey with the required course module on climate change and health. The module included topic-related articles, a chapter from the Environmental Health and Nursing textbook, a video presentation using the Nurses Climate Challenge short presentation, and a discussion assignment. Paired t-tests compared pre-post climate health awareness on each CHANT subscale and overall scores. Data were evaluated using two-tailed tests at alpha level .05.
Results: The majority of the 72 students who completed the pre and post CHANT surveys were female, White, and worked in acute care. The overall CHANT and subscales (awareness, motivation, home behaviors, and work behaviors) (p< 0.001) showed statistically significant pre-to-post score differences, except for the subscale concern, which showed no significant change.
Limitations: Conducting this study during the Covid-19 pandemic made making immediate changes in teaching content and methodology difficult. The sample’s demographic similarity could have influenced the results.
Conclusions/Implications for Practice: The CHANT survey provided a simple way to measure students’ awareness of climate change and its impact on health. The course module increased students’ awareness but not concern about climate change, suggesting that their knowledge increased but there was limited critical thinking to generate a change in the concern subscale. Future iterations should employ critical thinking teaching methodology with live discussions and case studies.
Description
Embedded in a Health Policy course, we piloted an educational module about climate change and health and tested its effectiveness as a tool for educating nursing students.