Ecology, Climate Change and Health MSc

The MSc Ecology, Climate Change and Health programme will fill this gap by training future transformative leaders who have the core capabilities and expertise to work collaboratively across disciplines of public health, animal, and ecosystem health to define and address key societal challenges. The key theme underpinning this programme is the concept of ‘One Health’, defined as an integrated unifying approach that aims to sustainably balance and optimise the health of people, animals, and ecosystems (World Health Organisation 2021).

Students from different disciplinary backgrounds will work together to explore key concepts such as public health, climate change, biodiversity loss, epidemiology, infectious disease, global health policy, sustainable development goals, ecosystem services, and nature-based solutions for health.

The programme is based within the People and Nature Lab in our brand-new campus UCL East in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park working with partners the Zoological Society of London and the Natural History Museum London and with external stakeholders such as WHO, WOAH, FAO, UNEP, RSPB, and the UK-CEH, students will be exposed to real-world ecological and health challenges at local and global levels and will develop the skills to provide their solutions.

The MSc Ecology, Climate Change and Health programme will connect research with both policy and practice, in recognition of the fact that a multisectoral response is needed to address critical global challenges such as health inequalities, climate change, and the biodiversity crisis. The programme will equip students with the ability to develop nature-based solutions to emergent global human and environmental health challenges, whether through a research, policy, or implementation lens.

The main aims of the programme are to:

• Provide an understanding of the links between people, nature, and health, exploring and critically assessing the framing of One Health.

• Explore the impact of human activities such as climate change and biodiversity loss on the interactions between people, nature, and health.

• Provide students with skills to understand, critically assess and apply multi-disciplinary approaches.

• Understand the range of data science analytical approaches needed to develop solutions within a One Health framework.

• Apply analytical approaches through real world applications to understand different health nexus issues, for example how land use is impacting the risk of wildlife pathogen spill over into human populations or how climate change is impacting food security.

• Develop science communication skills at the science-policy interface to create solutions for real-world health issues with NGOs and policymakers.