Done so far - Coming up next

What I did :

- Help from above :
unfortunately there is no one occupied with climate change and health on a national level in Belgium. So far for help from above…
In the last national report on climate change there is one full page about climate change and health, where heatstrokes and malaria are mentioned. So one new aim is to get at least 5 pages in the next report, written by a newly formed student group!
I did find people at the university to help me, they are working in the field of environment and health (mostly doing biomarker measuring but interested in climate change too). They will help me for the practical part (case-study), but the problem remains for the educational part: there is no one with expertise.. (or he/she is hiding pretty well)

- Help from peers:
that is going very well, there are plenty of students interested in Ghent University and yesterday IFMSA Belgium was formed and I was there to talk about the program to get the other universities involved. Everyone was incredibly enthusiastic, so next thing is setting up Healthy Planet Belgium. I wrote an outline of the program (what, why, how, …) to send to everyone that should be involved.
Oh and I also have contact with some engineers for the case-study (dialysis)

- Global Health and CC in the curriculum: we don’t have SSC’s or PHEMS, we don’t have global health in our curriculum BUT we will have it soon (even sooner than I’d expected!). I got a crucial professor (head of the curriculum committee) exited and other students to help me. We will have a meeting (end of June) to make a proposal for a 3-4 days course on global health, this proposal will be presented by myself at the committee in November. I invited some important professors to the meeting (most are in the committee, so they have to decide on their own proposal -> higher chance it will work) to help us with the program ((one of them is Marleen Temmerman, who just won the british lifetime achievement award)).

- Case study:
I choose the dialysis unit for several reasons (expertise from the green nephrology program, it’s simple, and I have an idea (which will remain secret until the next blog)). I went there last week to see if they were interested, and they were (a lot, almost too much). Thursday I have a meeting with the policy-person of sustainability in the hospital to talk about the program and see what can be done in the dialysis unit. When I have the basic info on the carbon footprint of our dialysis unit I’ll contact Frances to see which interventions are most interesting.

What I’m going to do:

- May-june:
get the case-study going, delegate it to other students because I’m away in the summer
preparing proposal for global health and CC in the curriculum
set up Healthy Planet Belgium under BeMSA (Belgian medical students association)
communicating with the most interested students in the other universities, so there is someone
responsible for every university.
keep on looking for someone with expertise in the field on a national level..

- July-august-september:
I’ll be away, so mostly preparing for the next year, where the project will start in other universities. And probably a lot of mails with the dialysis unit to see how everything is going. And self-directed learning.

- Beginning next academic year:
presenting case-study + project in all the universities. Organize workshop/weekend/or what we find appropriate to help everyone get started. Lectures about CC and health so that at least everyone knows there is a link.. (this is all still quite vague, but it will get clear along the way
I will start with broader policy issues because that is what interests me (the case-study now is more to show the other students what kind of things they can do and to get to know everyone in the hospital that is involved in sustainability).

It has been a lot of fun so far, because everyone I talked to is extremely enthusiastic. It’s like they were all just waiting for someone to propose them to do something. Just what I need to keep doing this when I actually have to study for my exams J