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Child-focused climate change and health content in medical schools and pediatric residencies

Pediatric Research volume 98, pages 1232–1237 (2025)Cite this article

Abstract

Anthropogenic climate change—driven primarily by the combustion of fossil fuels that form greenhouse gases—has numerous consequences that impact health, including extreme weather events of accelerating frequency and intensity (e.g., wildfires, thunderstorms, droughts, and heat waves), mental health sequelae of displacement from these events, and the increase in aeroallergens and other pollutants. Children are especially vulnerable to climate-related exposures given that they are still developing, encounter higher exposures compared to adults, and are at risk of losing many healthy future years of life. In order to better meet the needs of generations of children born into a world affected by climate change, medical trainees must develop their knowledge of the relationships between climate change and children’s health—with a focus on applying that information in clinical practice. This review provides an overview of salient climate change and children’s health topics that medical school and pediatric residency training curricula should cover. In addition, it highlights the strengths and limitations of existing medical school and residency climate change and pediatric health curricula.

Impact

  • Provides insight into the current climate change and pediatric health curricular opportunities for medical trainees in North America at both the medical school and residency levels.

  • Condenses climate change and pediatric health material relevant to trainees to help readers optimize curricula at their institutions.

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Funding

We thank the Sean N. Parker Center for Allergy and Asthma Research at Stanford University for their support. P.S. is supported in part by the Pediatric Environmental Health Specialty Unit (PEHSU) Program via a cooperative agreement award number 5 NU61TS000296-04 from the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR). The contents are the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR). The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) supports the PEHSU by providing partial funding to ATSDR under Inter-Agency Agreement number DW-75-95877701. Neither EPA nor ATSDR endorses the purchase of any commercial products or services mentioned in PEHSU publications.

Author information

Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Anna Goshua, Jason Gomez.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Stanford School of Medicine, Stanford, CA, USA

    Anna Goshua & Jason Gomez

  2. Stanford Graduate School of Business, Stanford, CA, USA

    Jason Gomez

  3. Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Med/Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA, USA

    Barbara Erny

  4. Department of Emergency Medicine, Precision Education and Assessment Research Lab Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA, USA

    Michael Gisondi

  5. Department of Pediatrics, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA, USA

    Lisa Patel

  6. Sean N. Parker Center for Allergy and Asthma Research, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Vanitha Sampath

  7. Departments of Environmental Medicine and Public Health and Pediatrics, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, USA

    Perry Sheffield

  8. Department of Environmental Health, T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Harvard University, Boston, MA, USA

    Kari C. Nadeau

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  1. Anna Goshua
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  2. Jason Gomez
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  3. Barbara Erny
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  8. Kari C. Nadeau
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Contributions

A.G. and J.G. made substantial contributions to conception and design, drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content. B.E., M.G., L.P., V.S., P.G., and J.G. drafted the article and revised it critically for important intellectual content. K.C.N. approved the final version of the manuscript to be submitted.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kari C. Nadeau.

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Goshua, A., Gomez, J., Erny, B. et al. Child-focused climate change and health content in medical schools and pediatric residencies. Pediatr Res 98, 1232–1237 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41390-023-02600-7

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