Effect of Health Promotion Program Regarding Environmental Literacy and Climate Change Health Risks among Newly Nursing Students

Abstract

Background: Climate change has an impact on human health, so, healthcare institutions must address this problem and its worldwide repercussions, so environmental literacy promotion is important which make individuals to take appropriate measures to protect or improve the health of environmental health system. The study aimed to evaluate the effect of health promotion program regarding environmental literacy and climate change health risk among newly nursing students. Research design: A quasi-experimental research (one group, pre/posttest) design was used. Setting: Faculty of Nursing- Kafr Elsheikh University. Sample: A purposive sample of 930 students. Tools: Three tools were used in this study, first tool: A Self-Administered Questionnaire, consisted of two parts, sociodemographic characteristics and students' knowledge questionnaire regarding environmental health and climate change, second tool: Students' perception questionnaire assessing perception regarding environment and climate, third tool: Students self-reported practices questionnaire regarding environmental health and climate change health risk. Results: 64.3% of students were female students from rural areas, 39.7% among students reported that social media is the most common source of information about climate change and 90% of studied sample had satisfactory total score knowledge of environmental literacy and climate change in the post promotion program with a statistically significant difference. There were 22.8% of studied sample had satisfactory total reported practices preprogram that improved into 83.7% post promotion program. The total nursing students' participant positive perception was 92.8% post promotion program with a highly statistically significant improvement at P<0.001.Conclusion: The current study indicated that the study findings showed an increase in the satisfactory knowledge total score level of the nursing students by almost of them after the implementation of promotion program with a highly statistically significant difference. Recommendations: Nursing programs should be developed to include sustainability and climate change into the curricula to provide students with the knowledge, abilities, and incentive to comprehend and address health risks posed by climate change.