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The Future of Careers at the Intersection of Climate Change and Public Health: What Can Job Postings and an Employer Survey Tell Us?

Climate change is acknowledged to be a major risk to public health. Skills and competencies related to climate change are becoming a part of the curriculum at schools of public health and are now a competency required by schools in Europe and Australia. However, it is unclear whether graduates of pu...

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Autores principales: Krasna, Heather, Czabanowska, Katarzyna, Jiang, Shan, Khadka, Simran, Morita, Haruka, Kornfeld, Julie, Shaman, Jeffrey
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7068354/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32085475
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17041310
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author Krasna, Heather
Czabanowska, Katarzyna
Jiang, Shan
Khadka, Simran
Morita, Haruka
Kornfeld, Julie
Shaman, Jeffrey
author_facet Krasna, Heather
Czabanowska, Katarzyna
Jiang, Shan
Khadka, Simran
Morita, Haruka
Kornfeld, Julie
Shaman, Jeffrey
author_sort Krasna, Heather
collection PubMed
description Climate change is acknowledged to be a major risk to public health. Skills and competencies related to climate change are becoming a part of the curriculum at schools of public health and are now a competency required by schools in Europe and Australia. However, it is unclear whether graduates of public health programs focusing on climate change are in demand in the current job market. The authors analyzed current job postings, 16 years worth of job postings on a public health job board, and survey responses from prospective employers. The current job market appears small but there is evidence from job postings that it may be growing, and 91.7% of survey respondents believe the need for public health professionals with training in climate change may grow in the next 5–10 years. Current employers value skills/competencies such as the knowledge of climate mitigation/adaptation, climate-health justice, direct/indirect and downstream effects of climate on health, health impact assessment, risk assessment, pollution-health consequences and causes, Geographic Information System (GIS) mapping, communication/writing, finance/economics, policy analysis, systems thinking, and interdisciplinary understanding. Ensuring that competencies align with current and future needs is a key aspect of curriculum development. At the same time, we recognize that while we attempt to predict future workforce needs with historical data or surveys, the disruptive reality created by climate change cannot be modeled from prior trends, and we must therefore adopt new paradigms of education for the emerging future.
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spelling pubmed-70683542020-03-19 The Future of Careers at the Intersection of Climate Change and Public Health: What Can Job Postings and an Employer Survey Tell Us? Krasna, Heather Czabanowska, Katarzyna Jiang, Shan Khadka, Simran Morita, Haruka Kornfeld, Julie Shaman, Jeffrey Int J Environ Res Public Health Article Climate change is acknowledged to be a major risk to public health. Skills and competencies related to climate change are becoming a part of the curriculum at schools of public health and are now a competency required by schools in Europe and Australia. However, it is unclear whether graduates of public health programs focusing on climate change are in demand in the current job market. The authors analyzed current job postings, 16 years worth of job postings on a public health job board, and survey responses from prospective employers. The current job market appears small but there is evidence from job postings that it may be growing, and 91.7% of survey respondents believe the need for public health professionals with training in climate change may grow in the next 5–10 years. Current employers value skills/competencies such as the knowledge of climate mitigation/adaptation, climate-health justice, direct/indirect and downstream effects of climate on health, health impact assessment, risk assessment, pollution-health consequences and causes, Geographic Information System (GIS) mapping, communication/writing, finance/economics, policy analysis, systems thinking, and interdisciplinary understanding. Ensuring that competencies align with current and future needs is a key aspect of curriculum development. At the same time, we recognize that while we attempt to predict future workforce needs with historical data or surveys, the disruptive reality created by climate change cannot be modeled from prior trends, and we must therefore adopt new paradigms of education for the emerging future. MDPI 2020-02-18 2020-02 /pmc/articles/PMC7068354/ /pubmed/32085475 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17041310 Text en © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Krasna, Heather
Czabanowska, Katarzyna
Jiang, Shan
Khadka, Simran
Morita, Haruka
Kornfeld, Julie
Shaman, Jeffrey
The Future of Careers at the Intersection of Climate Change and Public Health: What Can Job Postings and an Employer Survey Tell Us?
title The Future of Careers at the Intersection of Climate Change and Public Health: What Can Job Postings and an Employer Survey Tell Us?
title_full The Future of Careers at the Intersection of Climate Change and Public Health: What Can Job Postings and an Employer Survey Tell Us?
title_fullStr The Future of Careers at the Intersection of Climate Change and Public Health: What Can Job Postings and an Employer Survey Tell Us?
title_full_unstemmed The Future of Careers at the Intersection of Climate Change and Public Health: What Can Job Postings and an Employer Survey Tell Us?
title_short The Future of Careers at the Intersection of Climate Change and Public Health: What Can Job Postings and an Employer Survey Tell Us?
title_sort future of careers at the intersection of climate change and public health: what can job postings and an employer survey tell us?
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7068354/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32085475
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17041310
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