Education on climate risks and their implications for health

Abstract

The paper presents a descriptive study that analyzes the relationship between science and common culture in the social representations of problems arising from climate change, stressing the importance of promoting adequate communication and education on climate risks and their implications for health. The global climate change on Earth due to natural and anthropogenic causes that occurs at different time scales is a matter of controversy among scientists, policy makers and especially among ordinary citizens who are informed, generally, for the most common means of communication, creating a common culture in relation to this aspect that reveals very interesting facts about what is meant and is known for Climate Change and the consequences that such knowledge can lead to mitigate or otherwise increase. The construction of the common culture on climate change and the problems that entails is comprised of different construction way scientific element; so that knowledge of the common culture on Climate Change can improve education and communication about the threat of it to health. The study was conducted from the selection of a significant sample of 512 university students taking as independent variables the branch of knowledge and the course. Has been used as a tool for data collection a questionnaire with 45 questions of closed type, of which the first 32 questions are made with the intention of assessing students' knowledge regarding Climate Change and the remaining 13 questions are related personal and subjective aspects ; This paper is part of the research RESCLIMA project supported by the Ministry of Economy & Competitiveness, Government of Spain (EDU2015-63572-P) ; SI