Effect of Awareness Program Regarding Climate Change on Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices of University Students

Climate change is impacting human lives and health in a variety of ways. It threatens the essential ingredients of good health as; clean air, safe drinking water, nutritious food supply and safe shelter and has the potential to undermine decades of progress in global health. Aim: To evaluate the effect of awareness program regarding climate change on knowledge, attitude and practices of university students. Design: A quasi-experimental design. Setting: Faculty of Nursing, Kafr elsheikh University. Sampling: A systematic random sample consists of 425 students. Tool I: Structured questionnaire; composed of two parts. Part 1: Students’ personal characteristics. Part 2: Students' knowledge regarding climate change. Tool II: Students’ daily life reported practices questionnaire. Tool III: Students’ attitude regarding climate change questionnaire. Tool IV: Students’ awareness of climate change questionnaire. Results: There was a highly statistical significant difference between knowledge level, attitude and daily life practices of the university students regarding climate changes pre & post awareness program implementation. There was a positive correlation between knowledge, daily life practices & attitude of university students total scores pre/post program implementation at P<0.000. Conclusion: The awareness program has a significant positive effect on the students' level of knowledge; attitude and daily life reported practices regarding the climate change. Recommendation: Considerable work needs to be done in the direction of integrating climate change concepts into the university curriculums in order to increase the environmental awareness among all university students irrespective of their study specialization.