Impact of Awareness Program for Carbon Footprint Mitigation among Nursing Students. A Step toward Sustainability

Abstract

Background: Nursing students should be engaged in a structured program that raises their awareness of carbon footprint (CF) mitigation to prepare them for their critical future role toward community health promotion and environmental sustainability, through the adoption of low-carbon lifestyle behavior and thereby reducing their CF. Aim: Assess the impact of the awareness program for carbon footprint mitigation among nursing students as a step toward sustainability. Research Hypothesis: The implementation of the awareness program will lead to mitigating the carbon footprint rate among nursing students. Methodology: A stratified simple random sample comprising 276 nursing students from the Modern University for Technology and Information's faculty of nursing was employed in a quasi-experimental design Three instruments were applied: (1) The Structured Questionnaire for Nursing Students which is separated into two sectors to evaluate their personal characteristics and awareness of CF (2) Nursing students' low-carbon lifestyle behavior scale. (3) The Online Carbon Footprint Calculator. Results: A statistically significant improvement was detected between students' mean scores in CF awareness, and low-carbon lifestyle behavior before and after the intervention (P<0.000**). Additionally, the students' mean score of CF rate was statistically significantly reduced pre-intervention from 3.550 TonCo2e, to 3.032 TonCo2e during follow-up phase (P < 0.015*). Conclusions: The developed CF mitigation awareness program significantly improves students' knowledge, and encourages the adoption of de-carbonization lifestyle behavior which led to reduce their CF by approximately half a ton. Recommendations: Integrating climate change-related issues into universities' nursing curricula with greater emphasis on innovative CF mitigation strategies, to equip upcoming health leaders with environmental sustainability measures and to become model a decarbonized lifestyle for others.