Background: Climate change represents the greatest health risks to humanity and healthcare professionals all over the world are taking action to mitigate its impacts. The current study aimed to evaluate the perception of medical students at Ain Shams University (ASU) towards climate change, its health impact and medical students' responsibilities for it in the future.
Methods: A cross-sectional study was carried out among 503 medical students at ASU. The data was gathered using an electronic questionnaire covering socio-demographic characteristics and perceptions towards climate change using 5- point Likert scale.
Results: Among participants; (78.5%) were 20-25 years old, (54.9%) were females, (68.2%) were living in urban places and (57.9%) of them were in academic years. Most of them perceived agree to strongly agree towards the health impacts of climate change except for receiving medical education about it. Furthermore, females and those from urban sites reported a statistically significant disagreement regarding receiving previous medical education for climate change (p <0.001). After applying multi-variate analysis, clinical medical study was a significant predictor for the 25-point score assessing perception of climate change's health impact.
Conclusion: Medical students have good perception of climate change and it's important to teach them about it in medical programs. This will give future physicians the tools they need to deal with the health problems caused by climate change. Moreover, specific educational interventions and tailored methods are needed to teach all students about climate change in depth, focusing on environmental accountability at individual, community and institutional levels.