Media Credit: Tina Hogue Harvey Bowers, a nursing junior, puts the finishing touches on his "trash flower" during the Green Team's Earth Day Preparation held by the School of Nursing.

UT students built toilet paper rolls, bottles, aluminum cans and paper into a tower as part of National Public Health Week Wednesday.

The School of Nursing, along with the American Public Health Association, sponsored the week of activities to emphasize how climate change threatens people's health and to encourage students to be proactive.

The Green Team, a volunteer organization of nursing students, faculty and staff, distributed environmental quizzes and tips on how to reduce an individual's negative impact on the environment.

Marian Morris, a nursing school project manager, said the trash-art project was a manifestation of the "three R's": recycle, reuse and reduce.

Student passers-by were asked to sign the "Healthy Climate Pledge," a promise to take five steps to change their approach to climate change.

The goal of public health week is to create a conversation about climate change and what people can do to help, said Georges Benjamin, American Public Health Association executive director. The association tries to act as a catalyst to get people actively involved in their communities.

Robert Krug, a UT molecular genetics and microbiology professor, said the most dramatic epidemiological event to occur so far is the transfer of tropical diseases, such as malaria, to more temperate climates. Rising temperatures have allowed mosquitoes from Africa to survive in Italy, causing two separate malaria outbreaks.

Benjamin cited these appearances of tropical diseases and a rise in severe weather events, such as hurricanes and intense summer heat, as effects of climate change.

"Certainly, we're already beginning to see the effects in less developed nations where drought is an issue," he said. "We're not trying to scare people; we're just trying to make them prepared."

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