A national campaign guided by Health Care Without Harm  and the Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments, the Nurses Climate Challenge is led by nurses to educate 50,000 health professionals and students about the health impacts of climate change. Joining this challenge is important, Kathryn Murphy, Professor of Nursing at NVCC explains, as “every day, nurses take care of clients with asthma, cardiovascular disease, and poor nutrition; these conditions are impacted by air pollution, high temperature days, and extreme weather events. We need to ensure our graduates have the knowledge to provide the appropriate guidance and education to our patients, families, and communities.” 

By participating in the Challenge, the NVCC Nursing Program agrees to use at least one component of Nurses Climate Challenge content in a course, guest lecture, or presentation and report the number of students educated with Nurses Climate Challenge content after each education session.   

In turn, the Nurses Climate Challenge agrees to display NVCC’s name on the Nurses Climate Challenge website, identify NVCC as a participating school, to highlight individual faculty efforts on climate and health education on social media, and to publicize NVCC nursing faculty and student research on climate and health on their website. The organization will also host faculty sharing calls prior to fall and spring semesters to serve as a community of practice for climate and health education and provide quarterly reports on how many students have been educated and registered as nurse climate champions.  

According to Murphy, “Officially joining this campaign recognizes the work our program has already been doing. For NVCC, it is an amazing opportunity to join 41 other nursing programs in the United States, including those at Villanova, Johns Hopkins, and Columbia. Participating in the Challenge is evidence of our commitment to provide nurses of the future with information on climate change.”  

The School of Nursing Commitment is a partnership between national schools of nursing and Nurses Climate Challenge with 41 partners across the country.  More broadly, the Nurses Climate Challenge has over 1,800 champions representing 49 states in the U.S. and 30 countries outside the US on 6 continents.