Why is The Climate Path built around pre-existing education?
High-quality climate and environmental education already exists across universities, professional bodies, healthcare organisations, charities and international institutions. The challenge is not simply to create more education, but to enable organisations and their workforce to identify, access and navigate credible education efficiently.
Published research in sustainable healthcare education specifically recommends pooling educational resources to avoid duplication, including sharing recorded lectures, presentations, videos and online modules rather than individual institutions repeatedly developing their own resources.¹ This approach was considered more sustainable, particularly where specialist teaching expertise is limited.¹
This principle has been demonstrated in practice. A University of California initiative involving more than 100 health-professions faculty resulted in sustainable healthcare education reaching more than 7,000 learners across 99 courses; the vast majority of curriculum changes involved integrating sustainability education into existing courses rather than creating new ones.² UNESCO similarly recommends that green learning strategies build upon existing efforts and avoid duplication.³
The Climate Path applies these principles at organisational scale: identifying and curating credible existing education into structured pathways, reducing unnecessary duplication while enabling organisations to develop, monitor and evidence workforce capability.
References
- Tun S, Wellbery C, Teherani A. Faculty development and partnership with students to integrate sustainable healthcare into health professions education. Medical Teacher. 2019. Fulfilling a new obligation: Teaching and learning of sustainable healthcare in the medical education curriculum. doi:10.1080/0142159X.2019.1623870.
- Teherani A, et al. Faculty Development for Education for Sustainable Health Care: A University System-Wide Initiative to Transform Health Professional Education. Academic Medicine. 2023;98(6):680–687.
- UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning. Greening Communities Guidance: Lifelong Learning for Climate and Sustainability Action. UNESCO.
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