Summer 2022 Undergraduate Internship:

Bridging Research, Curriculum, and Action to Address Climate Change and Environmental Injustice

A partnership with the Western States Pediatric Environmental Health Specialty Unit (WSPEHSU) and the Environmental Research and Translation for Health (EaRTH) Center at University of California San Francisco

How can critical concerns in children’s environmental health be elevated into popular consciousness? How can this awareness lead to individual actions to improve children’s health? How can this momentum be translated into tangible increases in funding, improvements in access to resources, and holistic structural change to improve children’s environmental health, prioritizing equity for marginalized communities in the face of climate change?

This summer internship focuses on curriculum development, with the goal of better preparing high school aged youth for the increasing environmental justice implications of climate change. Students review literature, toolkits and materials with an eye for best practices in environmental health literacy broadly, and climate change and environmental justice curriculum development specifically. Emphasis is placed on developing project based and cross disciplinary curriculum that challenges participants to engage more deeply in their everyday environments and neighborhoods, as well as on deepening a collective sense of inclusion, equity and belonging. Leveraging substantive structural improvements to catalyze meaningful actions that benefit children’s health in communities disproportionately impacted by climate change is a priority. A summative curriculum will be developed, designed to be in alignment with high school Next Generation Science Standards curriculum requirements.

This project is being managed by personnel from the WSPEHSU and EaRTH centers and coordinated by medical students from UCSF and Tufts respectively.

The Western States Pediatric Environmental Health Specialty Unit (WSPEHSU) is a team of environmental health specialists, many of whom are pediatricians or healthcare providers. Our overall goal is to address the diverse environmental health needs of children and pregnant people in Federal Region 9 (California, Nevada, Arizona, Hawaii, Tribal nations, and the Pacific Islands), with special focus on health disparities, environmental justice, and climate change.