Sustainability in pharmaceutical and medical education – a political roadmap for Germany

Woitaske-Proske, C., Kemper, M., Zinke, L., Vidaurre, R., Strehse, J. S., Maser, E., Maack, G., Amato, R., Hein, A., & Peifer, C. (2026). Sustainability in pharmaceutical and medical education – a political roadmap for Germany. International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, 2026. https://doi.org/10.60810/openumwelt-8919

Zusammenfassung englisch

Purpose: Teaching of sustainability in pharmaceutical and medical sciences is not mandatory in Germany. As education is an important aspect of creating awareness for present and future generations, the authors created a political roadmap together with supporting material for the integration of sustainability within higher education, apprenticeships and professional training. Design/methodology/approach: This paper aims to summarise a two-tier project carried out from October 2021 to March 2025. Firstly, a political roadmap was created, afterwards teaching slides, an accompanying text, information material and a website were designed in close connection with stakeholder EPs and graphic designers to lower the hurdle for integrating sustainability aspects in health-care education. Findings: The authors demonstrate multiple possibilities for integrating sustainability into education within health care and generated open-access, easy-to-use and freely editable slides, together with an explanatory accompanying text. In addition, a website compiles important information on the key problems and measures that health-care professionals and patients can take to reduce the entry of drug residues into the environment. Continuously updated teaching slides and accompanying text, website and information material can be found at www.uba.de/hmp and downloaded from: www.umweltbundesamt.de/en/section-downloads Originality/value: The integration often fails due to lack of time, high hurdles of delving into a new topic and creating teaching material parallel to everyday work. This work provides a political roadmap for educational integration of sustainability, ready-to-use and easy-to-integrate teaching material. © Emerald Publishing Limited