This video describes how increasing temperatures and heavier rains are connected to numerous health risks, including making it more difficult to access care.
The potential physical and mental impacts are detailed, with special emphasis given to the most vulnerable groups, including the elderly, young children, and those with chronic health conditions.
Teaching Tips
Positives
The video includes the mental health concerns (like stress and depression) associated with navigating extreme weather events.
Additional Prerequisites
Although the video was created with New Jersey in mind, the content applies generally to the United States and any location experiencing increasing temperatures and heavier rainfall.
Students will get the most out of this video if they are already familiar with how climate change is increasing temperatures and changing rainfall patterns.
Differentiation
This resource could be incorporated into science lessons related to the impacts of climate change, the effects of changing precipitation patterns, and the spread of human diseases.
Health classes could use this video when discussing health conditions like asthma, cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, and water-borne and vector-borne illnesses.
Because this resource includes mental health effects, it connects well to social-emotional learning, and could be used to start a conversation about the stress or anxiety that learning about and experiencing climate change may cause.
The video underscores the impact of climate change on public health in New Jersey. It articulates how extreme heat would increase health conditions such as asthma, cardiovascular diseases, water-borne diseases, etc. It calls for the government to improve health services as climate change could cause further stress on mental health of New Jersey residents, especially the home-bound elderly. This is recommended for teaching.
Standards
Science and Engineering
ESS3: Earth and Human Activity
HS-ESS3-5 Analyze geoscience data and the results from global climate models to make an evidence-based forecast of the current rate of global or regional climate change and associated future impacts to Earth’s systems.
LS1: From Molecules to Organisms: Structures and Processes
MS-LS1-5 Construct a scientific explanation based on evidence for how environmental and genetic factors influence the growth of organisms.
English Language Arts
Speaking and Listening (K-12)
SL.6-8.2 Integrate and evaluate information presented in diverse media and formats, including point of view, reasoning, and use of evidence and rhetoric.
