Brighton and Sussex Medical School (BSMS)
The undergraduate degree course, Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (BMBS), has the overall aim of promoting good health and wellbeing, in line with SDG 3 Good Health and Wellbeing. The current curriculum includes teaching on environmental and social sustainability topics, such as reducing health inequalities, linking to SDG 10 Reducing Inequality, and sustainable healthcare, linking to SDG 12 Responsible Consumption and Production. Sustainable healthcare principles include patient empowerment, disease prevention, lean healthcare, and selecting lower carbon alternatives and these are included in several modules throughout the core curriculum.
The session Environment and Health in module 101 examines the impact of air pollution on health and the role of active transport in improving health. Modules 201 and 402 include sessions on Sustainable Healthcare which highlight the environmental impacts of healthcare such as carbon emissions and plastics waste, and ways to make healthcare more sustainable and a session on ‘Sustainable prescribing’ in module 308 examines ways for to reduce the carbon emissions associated with prescribing including reducing medicines wastage.
Meanwhile, module 402 includes a ‘Global Health Conference’ in which students learn about the global health threat of climate change, the moral and ethical responsibilities of healthcare professionals to protect health, as well as the health co-benefits of climate change mitigation and adaptation.
Elective student selected components (SSCs), where students can learn about a particular area in more depth, are offered across years 1 and 2. Relevant topics include Social determinants of health, Green medicine, and Climate change and sustainable healthcare.
The School is also home to the BSMS Healthcare Sustainability Group, a research and education group exploring the environmental, social, and economic factors of sustainability in health and healthcare. One aim of the group work is to develop capacity in teaching and learning on sustainable healthcare.
A team at BSMS have developed an online self-study resource for students to learn about the environmental impacts of surgery and ways in which this can be mitigated. This will be available to all students throughout the course.
Current sustainability related undergraduate modules include:
- 101 Clinical and Community Practice 1
- 201 Clinical and Community Practice 2
- 301 Clinical and Community Practice 3
- 308 Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics
- 402 Specialist rotations
The availability of the above modules depends on your chosen course of study. Please follow the module links to see which degree courses offer this module and look at your course prospectus to see whether modules are core or optional.
Case study: Teaching on inequalities and inclusion health
The Inequalities and Inclusion Health strand of teaching in years 1 and 2 of the course gives students the opportunity to examine the wider determinants of health through sessions such as ‘race and health’, ‘gender and health’ and ‘extremes of social exclusion and inclusion healthcare’.
Students learn about and explore the ways in which health inequalities and inequalities in access to healthcare affect health outcomes and how these inequalities can be tackled. This strand of teaching embeds the importance of social sustainability in health and healthcare into medical students’ learning and aligns the medical curriculum to SDG 5 Gender Equality and SDG 10 Reduced Inequality.