Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Medical Education
Date Submitted: Dec 10, 2025
Date Accepted: Jul 12, 2026
Attitudes Toward Digital Planetary Health Before and After a Lecture Series on Environmental Awareness and Visions of the Future: A repeated Cross-Sectional Survey Study regarding Twin-Transformation
ABSTRACT
Background:
The focus on sustainability in university teaching and education about the climate catastrophe is constantly increasing and is essential for creating change. The chances offered by digital technological innovations are decisive for the spotlight on planetary health education. Alongside welfare economies and social movements, they are one of the areas with great potential to drive sustainable development.
Objective:
This study aimed to evaluate the impact of a fully digital planetary health lecture series on participants' enviromental health awareness, knowledge related to climate.associated health risks, and their percerption of the need for integrating digital and planetary health education into university curricula.
Methods:
A pseudonymous and nonexperimental cross-sectional survey (pre-post design) was conducted. The aim of this study was to survey and compare the attitudes and knowledge of participants before and after a lecture series on digital planetary health in order to examine the extent to which the lecture series has an impact on participants' environmental awareness and visions of the future.
Results:
There were 215 participants in the pre-survey questionnaire (T1-measurement) and 105 participants in the post-survey questionnaire (T2-measurement). It was found that 91% of participants consider it important to address the climate crisis and its impact on health as well as digital aspects in their studies. In the T1-T2 comparison, significant effects on the perception of water availability-related and food-related diseases were found (increase). 44% (n=46) of T2 participants stated that the range of educational events on digital health at universities was inadequate.
Conclusions:
The synergies identified show that the lecture series itself also left its mark and motivated the participants to get involved in the field of climate protection. The culture of discussion in the lecture series and beyond was characterized not least by the expertise and knowledge that the participants had already brought with them into the lecture series.
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Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.