Climate and Health Youth Education Toolkit
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Provided by: American Public Health Association|Published on: June 16, 2024
Lesson PlansScientist Reviewed
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Scientist Reviewed This resource has been reviewed by SubjectToClimate's climate scientists and verified for scientific accuracy and up-to-date information. Learn about our review process →
Synopsis
- This teacher guide and lesson plan are designed for health professionals to use for a guest lecture about the health impacts of climate change in a high school class.
- Though the target audience is health professionals, health and science teachers will also find this lesson relevant and teacher-friendly.
- Students will read a section of the Executive Summary for the 2016 Climate and Health Assessment and look at climate change and health impacts as a system.
Subjects: Biology, Health
Authors: American Public Health Association
Region: United States
Languages: English
Teaching Materials
Positives
- The Evaluating an Adaptation Strategy activity includes a scoring guide that is helpful for both students and teachers.
- The Tips From a High School Teacher section is extremely helpful for teachers to use throughout the year.
Prerequisites
- The lesson will take about an hour and a half.
- Students should understand climate change and its causes.
- The links for the Executive Summary of the 2016 Climate and Health Assessment and the chapter summaries are broken but can be found as PDFs using the other readings link.
- The PowerPoint uses the terms adaptation and adaption interchangeably. To limit confusion, teachers may want to explain this or change all terms to the more popular term, adaptation.
- There are a few broken links in the Resources section.
Differentiation & Implementation
- Teachers can allow students to choose the evaluation activity they want to do, assign them based on their students' strengths, or have students complete multiple activities.
- Teachers can use information gained from the prior knowledge segment to create strategic groups for the reading and graphic organizer portion of the lesson.
- As students learn about the impending health impacts of climate change, they may need help processing difficult emotions. The Climate Emotions Wheel can help with this.
- To showcase the students' evaluation activity, teachers can host a Solutions Fair where students present their created and researched solutions to the rest of the school or the community.
This toolkit provides information about how climate change and human health are related. Students should have background knowledge about climate change basics before this lesson. Climate impacts, mitigation, and justice are all discussed along with different aspects of public health (e.g. diseases, food, mental health, etc.). Students will also become familiar with how scientists choose their research topics. The information presented is accurate and this resource is recommended for teaching.
Teaching Tips
Standards
Resource Type and Format
Scientist Reviewed
This resource has been reviewed by SubjectToClimate's climate scientists and verified for scientific accuracy and up-to-date information. Our review process ensures that every resource in our library reflects the current state of climate science.
Learn about our review process →
