What is chAnGE?
The ‘Climate change and healthy AgeinG: co-creating E-learning for resilience and adaptation’ (chAnGE) project is an Erasmus+ co-funded project which commenced on October 1st, 2023. chAnGE aims to enable and empower health and social care (HSC) workers to plan and incorporate climate adaptation and resilience into their everyday work. The chAnGE project will develop interactive, accessible, and bite-sized e-learning, co-created with target learners and older people. The e-learning will be ‘stackable’ micro-credentials (MC), where a learner can accumulate learning credits over time.
Recent unprecedented climate change and extreme weather events have resulted in an escalation in climate-related health risks within the ever-expanding European population of older people. Climate-vulnerability in older people is exacerbated by the challenges of providing safe and responsive healthcare during climate crisis events.
A needs analysis conducted by the chAnGE partners found that climate change, health and active ageing are overlooked in policy. Climate action often focuses on youth action. Health and social care (HSC) workers need knowledge and skills in climate change adaptation and mitigation to give them the resilience and leadership capacity to provide healthcare to an increasing number of climate-vulnerable older people, and to overcome more frequent and severe weather events. There is thus a need for flexible, tailored, online learning for HSC workers on the climate-health-ageing nexus.
chAnGE is an alliance of universities, vocational education and training (VET) providers, and health and social care (HSCO) organisations across five geographically and culturally diverse countries: Austria, Finland, Greece, Ireland, and Portugal. Six associate partners also contribute to the chAnGE project.
