Undergraduate Course: Health in a Changing Climate (SCAN08017)
Course Outline
| School | School of Social and Political Science |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 8 (Year 1 Undergraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | 'Health in a Changing Climate' encourages students to adopt an interdisciplinary lens on the complex global challenge of health and climate change. Open to pre-honours students from all degree backgrounds, the course uniquely draws upon expertise from across the three Colleges of the University of Edinburgh, exposing students to different ways of thinking about - and assisting in the resolution of - how health and climate interact at the level of individuals, communities, populations and ecosystems. |
| Course description |
A changing climate has impacts on the health of people, animals, and ecosystems - impacts that are simultaneously cited as reasons to address greenhouse emissions and climate change. These impacts are characterised by feedback loops, time lags, and cascading consequences that cross every disciplinary and political boundary we might draw around them, and produce problems that no single discipline or methodology can capture. You will engage with this complexity as you encounter multiple disciplinary lenses - from the natural sciences, social and political sciences, quantitative and technical sciences, to the health sciences - in dialogue with interconnected themes including heat-related illnesses, respiratory problems, effects of extreme weather events, vector-borne disease, food and water security, and climate anxiety.
You will go beyond biological explanations of the health challenges posed by climate change to consider how they are simultaneously psychological, social, political, and ethical. You will debate possible routes to climate and health justice, and interrogate the interactions between climate adaptation policies, land use changes, health care infrastructure, and community vulnerability, gaining an in-depth understanding of why it is that siloed perspectives are not sufficient to address the complexity of climate-health challenges. By examining how health impacts are attributed to climate change and how possible health benefits of a warming world are assessed, you will learn how to navigate risks, uncertainties, and gaps in evidence. Through engagement with scientific uncertainty and competing frameworks, you will develop the capacity to synthesise diverse forms of evidence, interrogate the assumptions of your own discipline, and communicate across disciplinary boundaries - essential skills for tackling complex global challenges that cannot be resolved from within any single field.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
| High Demand Course? |
Yes |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2026/27, Available to all students (SV1)
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Quota: None |
| Course Start |
Semester 2 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Lecture Hours 10,
Seminar/Tutorial Hours 10,
Other Study Hours 6,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
170 )
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| Additional Information (Learning and Teaching) |
Includes 6-hour symposium in Flexible Learning Week where students present work-in-progress.
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
Policy Brief (group) (3,000 words) 60%
Reflective Paper (individual) (1,250 words) 40% |
| Feedback |
The group Policy Brief will be prepared in a scaffolded manner during class time, with opportunities to engage with teaching staff throughout on the progress of this work. Students will receive cross-disciplinary feedback from staff on their work-in-progress at the symposium.
Students will be able to integrate general feedback from the Policy Brief into the Reflective Paper. The Reflective Paper also presents a formalisation of the types of discussions held during class time, so formative feedback by way of verbal feedback on in-class activities will support the production of the formal assessment. |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Describe the major impacts on health related to climate change, and identify different disciplinary approaches to, and perspectives on, these health challenges
- Analyse and synthesise diverse forms of evidence - including evidence characterised by uncertainty and ongoing debate - to address a climate-health challenge
- Apply knowledge and understanding from multiple disciplines to develop and justify evidence-based responses to a complex climate-health problem
- Communicate ideas and arguments across disciplinary boundaries
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Reading List
Ansah, E.W., Amoadu, M., Obeng, P. and Sarfo, J.O., 2024. Health systems response to climate change adaptation: a scoping review of global evidence. BMC Public Health, 24(1), p.2015.
Gomes, S.M., Carvalho, A.M., Cantalice, A.S., Magalhaes, A.R., Tregidgo, D., de Oliveira, D.V.B., da Silva, E.B., de Menezes-Neto, E.J., da Silva Maia, J.K., de Gusmão, R.A.F. and Júnior, V.D.M.B., 2024. Nexus among climate change, food systems, and human health: An interdisciplinary research framework in the Global South. Environmental Science & Policy, 161, p.103885.
Singer, Merrill, Eleanor Shoreman-Ouimet, and Ashley L. Graham. 2022. 'Climate Change and Health: Anthropology and Beyond'. In A Companion to Medical Anthropology, edited by Merrill Singer, Pamela I. Erickson, and César E. Abadía-Barrero. Wiley Blackwell.
van Oorschot, I. and van Balen, S., 2025. Sensing and making sense of climate change in a Western European urban setting: Bodily exposures, uncertain epistemologies, and climatic care practices. The Sociological Review, 73(5), pp.1085-1103. |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Communication: Ability to communicate beyond disciplinary silos
Research and enquiry: Application of problem-solving skills to a complex global challenge
Personal and intellectual autonomy: critically evaluate ideas and evidence from an open-minded perspective
Personal effectiveness: working collaboratively in interdisciplinary teams to contribute to shared goals |
| Keywords | environment,justice,inequality,wellbeing,global challenges,society,policy |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Rebecca Marsland
Tel: (0131 6)51 3864
Email: r.marsland@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | |
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