Social Relevance Environmental Education in Medical Universities

Introduction: Today's world faces a serious environmental crisis, which demands the training of professionals with a broad environmental culture, constituting Environmental Education an essential pillar in the substantive processes of medical education. The objective of this work is: To substantiate the social meaning of Environmental Education in the training of Medical Sciences professionals. Methods: Qualitative research predominates in the work, it is based on dialectical materialism as a scientific conception of the world, which enables the use of theoretical methods, such as historical-logical, analytical-synthetic and inductive-deductive. At the empirical level, the analysis of documents emanating from Cuban environmental legislation, and others of international scope, was carried out. Results: The importance of Environmental Education has been highlighted in the professional training of future graduates of Medical Sciences, and emphasizes the need to deploy systematic actions in all spheres of university life to develop their environmental awareness and responsibility. Conclusions: The need to include Environmental Education in the substantive university processes of Medical Sciences was founded, on the basis of critical and evaluative training towards the environment and its conservation, which allows the integration of ethical knowledge, axiology and the environmental contextualization in correspondence with the objectives demanded by their profession and the health and disease processes that are verified in the community environment, where the students develop.