UMass Chan Medical School
EN-1: Student Educators Program

The Sustainability Liaison is appointed by the student government alliance. Students are trained and monitored by advising faculty. Their role is to facilitate student initiatives across the SOM, GSBS, and GSN, promote sustainability to students, collaborate with the Sustainability Office on sustainability initiatives, and serve as a point of contact for all students as a subject matter expert in sustainability for the SGA. Recent initiatives have included a sustainable commute challenge, recycling audits and recycling competitions at the SGA annual picnic. Training, coordination support, and advice is given by the Office of Sustainability as-needed.

All UMass Chan Students and faculty advisors

An OEE is a course designed by students working with a faculty advisor that must be reviewed and approved by a subcommittee of the School of Medicine Elective Curriculum Committee. OEEs do not carry formal credit, however they are listed on a student’s transcript. The Faculty Advisor trains the student organizers on teaching strategies, course building, content inclusion, and facilitation techniques for leading the course.

Joseph Douglass, Sarah Calove, Rachel Lyons and Amroze, all second-year SOM students, became the co-leaders of the OEE they created called “Climate Change and Medicine”. They identified content areas of interest and recruited guest speakers. The team was advised by Heather Alker, MD, assistant professor of family medicine & community health at UMass Chan. Dr. Alker provided students with the right training, support, and coordination to run the course and become subject matter experts in this topic.

The course ran from January through March, with seven 90-minute lectures, conducted on Zoom. The program included:

“Introduction to Climate Change and Health,” by Caleb Dresser, MD, SOM ’16, a climate and health fellow at Harvard Medical School and emergency medicine resident at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

“Climate Change, Health and Health Care,” by Amy Collins, MD, an emergency medicine physician at MetroWest Medical Center and senior clinical advisor at Health Care Without Harm.

“Sustainable Health Care Systems,” by Winston Vaughan, Boston director of climate solutions, at Health Care Without Harm.

“Effective Advocacy at the Community and State Level,” by Regina La Rocque, MD, MPH, an infectious disease specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital.

“Climate Justice and Equity,” by Caitlin Rublee, MD, MPH, assistant professor of emergency medicine, at Medical College of Wisconsin.

“Climate Health Action: Heat and Priority Populations,” by Melanie Garate, climate resiliency project manager, at Mystic River Watershed Association and Caleb Dresser, MD, a climate and health fellow at Harvard Medical School and an emergency medicine resident at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

“Impact of Climate Change on Women’s Health,” by Cecilia Sorensen, MD, an emergency medicine physician and The Living Closer Foundation Fellow in Climate and Health Science Policy at University of Colorado, Boulder.

On average, 15 to 20 students logged on for each lecture.

Organized by the same team who created the Climate Change and Medicine OEE, the Climate Health and Action OEE began in September and continues into the Spring of 2023. The goal of this OEE is to expand medical students’ understanding of the environment as a determinant of health in order to better prepare future physicians to address growing health burdens related to climate change and to encourage advocacy for environmental protection as it relates to public health and medicine. To this end, the OEE contains two 6-lecture series’ given by experts in various intersections of medicine and climate change. The fall semester will focus on climate health, while the spring will focus on climate action. Students will attend lectures and write a brief reflection at the end of the semester. The Climate Health/Action OEEs is designed to give students an opportunity to learn about climate change within the context of health and medicine, specifically related to certain medical specialties and more broadly as a public health issue.
Sessions to date include:
- Health Implications of Extreme Heat, focus on Incarcerated Populations
- Climate Crisis's Effect on Dermatology
- Gender-specific Impacts of the Climate Crisis
- Climate Change and Air Pollution
- Climate Change and Maternal Fetal Health

All UMass Chan students

All entering first-year students are assigned to one of seven houses, each with regionally significant names. These social and academic homes are overseen by faculty mentors, who act as advisors, teachers and career development coaches, who provide training, structure, and guidance to each house. Each house has a sustainability champion who shares resources and information to engage with campus sustainability and inter-house sustainability challenges. These Champions become subject matter experts in sustainability among their cohort.

UMass Chan Students and faculty advisors