NNLM Region 1 and APHA introduce climate-and-health youth toolkit for teachers and libraries

April Wright, an outreach and education librarian for NNLM Region 1, opened the webinar on the American Public Health Association's Climate and Health Youth Education Toolkit and described NNLM's role as the outreach network of the National Library of Medicine.

"The National Library of Medicine or NLM is one of the 27 institutes and offices of the National Institutes of Health," Wright said, noting NNLM's resources such as MedlinePlus and PubMed and directing participants to nnlm.gov for region-specific services and recordings.

Leila McCertie, chair of APHA's Children's Environmental Health Committee, introduced the toolkit as a resource to help educators address young people's climate-related concerns. "Children and youth are disproportionately vulnerable to both physical and mental health impacts," McCertie said, and the toolkit, she added, aims to give youth "knowledge, tools and skills which can empower them to take action for climate solutions."

Dr. Becky Larson, who leads the committee's climate-and-health youth initiative, provided a detailed overview of the materials. She said the toolkit centers on a 100-minute lesson plan for grades 9'12 adapted from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences curriculum, but that facilitators can shorten or reorder segments for 50-minute classes or other settings.

"The toolkit has student reading materials in two lengths so you can adapt for different literacy levels," Dr. Larson said. She also noted a downloadable, modifiable PowerPoint (originally developed in 2017) and said the committee plans to update some data while preserving the curriculum's core components.

The toolkit includes activity pages, answer keys, extension projects (student resilience projects and environmental-justice case studies), suggested learning objectives and outreach templates for contacting teachers and community partners. Presenters emphasized local adaptation: facilitators should select examples and case studies that match the community's climate exposures and priorities.

A student presenter, Cody, described using the toolkit in a 50-minute presentation to an environmental-health high-school class after adapting the full lesson plan. Cody said the group relied heavily on graphics and interactive methods (a climate-change bingo and progressive reveal visuals) to keep students engaged, and that strong engagement sometimes made pre/post assessments difficult to complete as planned.

"I do believe that us having the audience of the environmental health students in our class really did aid in the success of connecting the main points," Cody said, noting the presentation prompted questions and local examples from students.

Ruby Mahoney, library services specialist at NNLM Region 1, outlined how libraries can use the toolkit beyond formal classrooms: book discussions, film screenings, community art projects (for example, Tempestry-style displays of heat data), and other public programs. She encouraged librarians to choose titles and events that reflect community concerns and to use the toolkit's engagement exercises to prompt local conversation.

The webinar closed with a question-and-answer session on practical connections between climate and health. When an attendee asked how existing asthma programs and American Lung Association school trainings relate to climate work, panelists pointed to concrete links such as wildfire smoke and PM2.5 infiltration into school buildings and noted that many air-quality interventions (trees, improved filtration, upgraded HVAC) can both improve health and reduce climate-related heat impacts.

Panelists also discussed teaching mitigation alongside adaptation. They advised educators to emphasize local, tangible impacts and personal stories to avoid overwhelming young learners, and to frame solutions that both protect health now and reduce long-term climate risk.

Organizers said the webinar is recorded and will be posted on NNLM's YouTube page; participants were reminded to complete the evaluation to receive CHES or CHIS credit.