Scotland has just made a move that could reshape how the next generation of doctors is trained. Five of the country’s medical schools have joined forces to secure £100,000 from the Scottish Government, with one bold mission: make sustainable healthcare a core part of every medical degree. For the very first time, all five Scottish medical schools are working under one unified national plan.
What the £100,000 Grant Will Actually Do
The funding comes through the Scottish Sustainable Healthcare Education Board, known as SSHEB. It will pay for a brand new post called the Scottish Clinical Leadership Fellow. Based at the University of St Andrews, this person will work across all five schools to embed environmental sustainability thinking into undergraduate medical programmes. The five schools on board are the Universities of St Andrews, Glasgow, Dundee, Aberdeen, and Edinburgh. All five are core SSHEB members and are fully committed to the programme. Here is what the Fellow will be responsible for:
- Building shared teaching resources that all five schools can use
- Aligning each school’s curriculum with NHS Scotland’s climate commitments
- Connecting academic teaching with sustainable clinical practice on the ground
- Coordinating a national, system-wide approach across institutions
Gareth Miles, Assistant Vice Principal and Dean of Science at St Andrews, described this as “a coherent national framework, the first of its kind in Scottish medical education.”
The White Paper That Set the Plan in Motion
This funding builds on months of serious groundwork. In February 2026, a landmark white paper was launched at a parliamentary reception at Holyrood. Titled “A ‘Once for Scotland’ Approach to Embed Sustainable Healthcare Education in the Undergraduate Medical Training,” it laid out a clear, cross-institutional strategy. **The white paper is the first of its kind ever produced in Scottish medical education.** Professor Jonathan Issberner of the University of St Andrews, who chairs SSHEB, authored the document with contributions from all five medical schools. He described it as “the beginning of a genuinely national programme” to place Scotland at the forefront of sustainable medical education. The “Once for Scotland” title carries real meaning. Rather than each school developing its own separate approach, the plan creates one shared, consistent framework for the whole country. That single vision is now backed by government money and a dedicated leadership role to make it real.
Scotland Plugs Into a Bigger European Push
The white paper was supported by the European Network on Climate and Health Education, better known as ENCHE.
“By bringing medical schools together with key partners, we are creating a coherent, system-wide approach that links education, healthcare delivery and national priorities.” Prof. Jonathan Issberner, University of St Andrews
ENCHE is chaired by the University of Glasgow and operates as a regional hub of the Global Consortium on Climate and Health Education at Columbia University in the United States. Founded in October 2024, the network already connects 42 medical schools from across Europe. In its first three years, it aims to train at least 10,000 medical students using the latest climate and health education resources. The global numbers explain why this urgency exists:
- The healthcare sector contributes around 5% of global greenhouse gas emissions
- In 2020, only 25% of European medical schools formally taught climate change as part of their curriculum
- In 2022, three quarters of doctors and nurses in France, Germany and the UK had no environmental literacy support
- By 2024, that figure had improved, with 60% of European public health schools embedding climate education into their mandatory core curriculum
Professor Iain McInnes, Vice-Principal at the University of Glasgow and co-chair of ENCHE, said the investment “highlights the leadership role medical education is taking in responding to the climate emergency.”
Why Climate and Medicine Must Connect Now
There is a direct, urgent reason behind this entire initiative. NHS Scotland has committed to becoming a net zero health service by 2040. Back in 2019, it became the first national health service in the UK to formally commit to a zero emissions target within its own operations. **But hitting net zero in healthcare is not just about buildings or fleets. It is about the people who deliver care every single day.** Doctors make hundreds of clinical decisions that carry an environmental cost, from the medications they prescribe to the procedures they recommend. Without climate education built into their training, those decisions happen with no sustainability awareness at all. Professor Deborah Williamson, Dean of Medicine at St Andrews, put it clearly. She said embedding sustainable healthcare into medical education is “both a responsibility and an opportunity,” and that this programme demonstrates what is possible when schools work together with shared purpose. The Scottish Government’s 2026 Spending Review also pointed directly to climate resilience as a core priority within health reform. Climate-related health threats, including heat stress, flooding-related illness, and the spread of new infectious diseases, are no longer distant risks. They are already affecting patients across Scotland today. The Scottish Clinical Leadership Fellow is set to begin the post in August 2026, marking the start of active delivery on the ground. Scotland’s decision to unite all five of its medical schools under one nationally coordinated sustainable healthcare education plan is not a small administrative step. It is a genuine statement about what medicine must look like in the years ahead. The doctors who graduate from these schools will treat patients in a world already shaped by climate change, and now they will be trained to meet that reality head-on. This matters for every patient, every family and every community that depends on the NHS. What are your thoughts on teaching climate sustainability in medical schools? Drop your views in the comments below.
