​This pilot Global Virtual Classroom programme is a four-week online student research forum focused on the health impacts of climate change. The forum is an opportunity for students from UBC and Aga Khan University to collaborate across disciplines and cultures, problem-solve on some of the world's toughest issues, and co-create original research. With mixed teams involving students from both universities, the programme ​​​consists of the following:  

Climate change is the single biggest health threat facing humanity, and health professionals worldwide are already responding to the health harms caused by this unfolding crisis. 
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The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has concluded that to avert catastrophic health impacts and prevent millions of climate change-related deaths, the world must limit temperature rise to 1.5°C. Past emissions have already made a certain level of global temperature rise and other changes to the climate inevitable. Global heating of even 1.5°C is not considered safe, however; every additional tenth of a degree of warming will take a serious toll on people’s lives and health. 

While no one is safe from these risks, the people whose health is being harmed first and worst by the climate crisis are the people who contribute least to its causes, and who are least able to protect themselves and their families against it - people in low-income and disadvantaged countries and communities. 

The climate crisis threatens to undo the last fifty years of progress in development, global health, and poverty reduction, and to further widen existing health inequalities between and within populations. It severely jeopardizes the realization of universal health coverage (UHC) in various ways – including by compounding the existing burden of disease and by exacerbating existing barriers to accessing health services, often at the times when they are most needed. Over 930 million people - around 12% of the world’s population - spend at least 10% of their household budget to pay for health care. With the poorest people largely uninsured, health shocks and stresses already currently push around 100 million people into poverty every year, with the impacts of climate change worsening this trend. 

The forum consists of four, two-hour academic sessions held each Wednesday in May (3, 10, 17, 24). The first three sessions will each be led by a UBC and an AKU faculty member and each session will focus on a different aspect of the theme. Students will be placed into cross-institutional, cross-disciplinary teams to work on developing a group research presentation focused on a sub-theme of their choice. Teams will meet outside lecture hours to work on their research presentations, which will be delivered on the final Saturday.

Fees

​Application Deadline: March 31​​, 2023.