Planetary Health and Bioethics

Sustainability

A general transition to plant-based diets is recommended for improved human and planetary health. The information about why people opt for plant-based diets can be used to profile future health promotion initiatives. We studied the reasons that encouraged the adoption and maintenance of plant-based diets and the influence of the socio-cultural environment and other external factors. Through the use of a specifically designed questionnaire, we evaluated two different populations. Interpreting data from 229 participants, we observed the relevance of adapting strategies to motivate people to embrace plant-based diets according to their socio-cultural environment. External factors facilitating access to plant-based products appeared to be essential in both populations.

Palgrave communications, 2018

Despite extraordinary advances in biomedicine and associated gains in human health and well-being, a growing number of health and well-being related challenges have remained or emerged in recent years. These challenges are often 'more than biomedical' in complexion, being social, cultural and environmental in terms of their key drivers and determinants, and underline the necessity of a concerted policy focus on generating healthy societies. Despite the apparent agreement on this diagnosis, the means to produce change are seldom clear, even when the turn to health and well-being requires sizable shifts in our understandings of public health and research practices. This paper sets out a platform from which research approaches, methods and translational pathways for enabling health and well-being can be built. The term 'healthy publics' allows us to shift the focus of public health away from 'the public' or individuals as targets for intervention, and away from ...

Nutrients

There is widespread interest in dietary strategies that lower environmental impacts. However, various forms of malnutrition are also widely prevalent. In a first study of its kind, we quantify the water-scarcity footprint and diet quality score of a large (>9000) population of self-selected adult daily diets. Here, we show that excessive consumption of discretionary foods—i.e., energy-dense and nutrient-poor foods high in saturated fat, added sugars and salt, and alcohol—contributes up to 36% of the water-scarcity impacts and is the primary factor differentiating healthier diets with lower water-scarcity footprint from poorer quality diets with higher water-scarcity footprint. For core food groups (fruits, vegetables, etc.), large differences in water-scarcity footprint existed between individual foods, making difficult the amendment of dietary guidelines for water-scarcity impact reduction. Very large reductions in dietary water-scarcity footprint are possible, but likely best a...

American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine

The COVID-19 pandemic has made it challenging for individuals and families to maintain a healthy lifestyle, quality of life, and well-being. Preliminary evidence have suggested that higher odds of both mortality and severity of the COVID-19 are closely associated to unhealthy lifestyle behaviors. Thus, in an effort to contribute to this challenging global situation, we joined a group of lifestyle medicine researchers and/or practitioners to provide scientifically sound information, recommendations, resources, and suggestions related to the main pillars of lifestyle medicine (healthy eating, physical activity, sleep, tobacco/alcohol, stress management, relationships, and planetary health) that may help health practitioners to support clients and patients maintain a healthy lifestyle during (and after) the COVID-19 crisis.

Frontiers in veterinary science, 2017

Several holistic and interdisciplinary approaches exist to safeguard health. Three of the most influential concepts at the moment, One Health, EcoHealth, and Planetary Health, are analyzed in this paper, revealing similarities and differences at the theoretical conceptual level. These approaches may appear synonymous, as they all promote the underlying assumption of humans and other animals sharing the same planet and the same environmental challenges, infections and infectious agents as well as other aspects of physical-and possibly mental-health. However, we would like to illuminate the differences between these three concepts or approaches, and how the choice of terms may, deliberately or involuntary, signal the focus, and underlying values of the approaches. In this paper, we have chosen some proposed and well-known suggestions of definitions. In our theoretical analysis, we will focus on at least two areas. These are (1) the value of the potential scientific areas which could b...

OMICS: A Journal of Integrative Biology

Sickle cell disease (SCD) is one of the most common blood disorders impacting planetary health. Over 300,000 newborns are diagnosed with SCD each year globally, with an increasing trend. The sickle cell disease ontology (SCDO) is the most comprehensive multidisciplinary SCD knowledge portal. The SCDO was collaboratively developed by the SCDO working group, which includes experts in SCD and data standards from across the globe. This expert review presents highlights and lessons learned from the fourth SCDO workshop that marked the beginning of applications toward planetary health impact, and with an eye to empower and cultivate multisite SCD collaborative research. The workshop was organized by the Sickle Africa Data Coordinating Center (SADaCC) and attended by 44 participants from 14 countries, with 2 participants connecting remotely. Notably, from the standpoint of democratizing and innovating scientific meeting design, an SCD patient advocate also presented at the workshop, giving a broader real-life perspective on patients' aspirations, needs,

Medical Teacher

Background: With deteriorating ecosystems, the health of mankind is at risk. Future health care professionals must be trained to recognize the interdependence of health and ecosystems to address the needs of their patients and communities. Health issues related to, e.g. climate change and air pollution, are not, however, generally included in medical education. Objectives: To assess the inclusion of climate change and air pollution in medical curricula and to guide the International Federation of Medical Students' Associations' (IFMSA) Vision of Climate Change in the Medical Curriculum. Methods: A study comprising three surveys (March 2019, August 2019, March 2020) explored medical students' perceptions of the current status of formal and non-formal elements of climate change and air pollution and health in their medical programs. Results: Respondents originated from 2817 medical schools in 112 countries. Only 15% of medical schools have incorporated climate change and health into the curriculum. Students led climaterelated activities in an additional 12% of medical schools. With regard to air pollution and health, only 11% of medical schools have formal education on the topic. Conclusions: It is crucial to acknowledge the current omissions from medical curricula and the importance of meaningful student involvement in curriculum transformation.

Geosciences

Following environmental pollution exposure, calls to screen the population for disease or disease markers are often made. Population screening is a cross-sectional review of a population to find latent cases or biomarkers of disease that indicate the possibility of disease development; it differs from environmental screening or an epidemiological survey. Recognized standard approaches have been developed over 60 years to ensure quality and effectiveness in complex programs. We surveyed the literature for papers on health screening following environmental exposures and checked them for reference to accepted criteria such as those of Wilson and Jungner. We applied these criteria to three situations covering source/hazard (arsenic contaminated land), pathway/exposure (radiation release), and receptor/disease (lead poisoning). We identified 36 relevant papers. Although across the papers the whole range of criteria were addressed, no paper or program utilized recognized criteria. Issues ...

Sustainability

Land provides a host of ecosystem services, of which the provisioning services are often considered paramount. As the demand for agricultural products multiplies, other ecosystem services are being degraded or lost entirely. Finding a sustainable trade-off between food production and one or more of other ecosystem services, given the variety of stakeholders, is a matter of optimizing land use in a dynamic and complex socio-ecological system. Land degradation reduces our options to meet both food demands and environmental needs. In order to illustrate this trade-off dilemma, four representative services, carbon sinks, water storage, biodiversity, and space for urbanization, are discussed here based on a review of contemporary literature that cuts across the domain of ecosystem services that are provided by land. Agricultural research will have to expand its focus from the field to the landscape level and in the process examine the cost of production that internalizes environmental costs. In some situations, the public cost of agriculture in marginal environments outweighs the private gains, even with the best technologies in place. Land use and city planners will increasingly have to address the cost of occupying productive agricultural land or the conversion of natural habitats. Landscape designs and urban planning should aim for the preservation of agricultural land and the integrated management of land resources by closing water and nutrient cycles, and by restoring biodiversity.

Frontiers in Psychology

Medical teacher, 2017

Global environmental change is associated with significant health threats. The medical profession can address this challenge through advocacy, health system adaptation and workforce preparedness. Stewardship of health systems with attention to their environmental impacts can contribute to mitigation of and adaptation to negative health impacts of environmental change. Medical schools have an integral role in training doctors who understand the interdependence of ecosystems and human health. Yet integrating environmental perspectives into busy medical curricula is not a simple task. At the 2016 Association for Medical Education in Europe conference, medical educators, students and clinicians from six continents discussed these challenges in a participatory workshop. Here we reflect on emerging themes from the workshop and how to plan for curricular change. Firstly, we outline recent developments in environmental health and associated medical education. Secondly, we reflect on our pro...

Environment and Behavior

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Sustainability Science

The SURFACES project is integrating action on good health and wellbeing [Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 3] and conservation of life on land (SDG 15) in the threatened rainforests of Papua New Guinea (PNG), and mapping evidence of similar projects worldwide. Our approach is framed by Planetary Health, aiming to safeguard both human health and the natural systems that underpin it. Our rationale is demonstrated through a summary of health needs and forest conservation issues across PNG, and how these play out locally. We outline differing types of integrated conservation and health interventions worldwide, providing examples from Borneo, Uganda, India and elsewhere. We then describe what we are doing on-the-ground in PNG, which includes expansion of a rainforest conservation area alongside the establishment of a nurse-staffed aid post, and an educational intervention conceptually linking forest conservation and health. Importantly, we explore some ethical considerations on the cond...

Clinical and Translational Allergy

Background The Nature Step to Respiratory Health was the overarching theme of the 12th General Meeting of the Global Alliance against Chronic Respiratory Diseases (GARD) in Helsinki, August 2018. New approaches are needed to improve respiratory health and reduce premature mortality of chronic diseases by 30% till 2030 (UN Sustainable Development Goals, SDGs). Planetary health is defined as the health of human civilization and the state of the natural systems on which it depends. Planetary health and human health are interconnected, and both need to be considered by individuals and governments while addressing several SDGs. Results The concept of the Nature Step has evolved from innovative research indicating, how changed lifestyle in urban surroundings reduces contact with biodiverse environments, impoverishes microbiota, affects immune regulation and increases risk of NCDs. The Nature Step calls for strengthening connections to nature. Physical activity in natural environments shou...

Sustainability Science

Pursuing integrated research and decision-making to advance action on the sustainable development goals (SDGs) fundamentally depends on understanding interactions between the SDGs, both negative ones (''trade-offs'') and positive ones (''co-benefits''). This quest, triggered by the 2030 Agenda, has however pointed to a gap in current research and policy analysis regarding how to think systematically about interactions across the SDGs. This paper synthesizes experiences and insights from the application of a new conceptual framework for mapping and assessing SDG interactions using a defined typology and characterization approach. Drawing on results from a major international research study applied to the SDGs on health, energy and the ocean, it analyses how interactions depend on key factors such as geographical context, resource endowments, time horizon and governance. The paper discusses the future potential, barriers and opportunities for applying the approach in scientific research, in policy making and in bridging the two through a global SDG Interactions Knowledge Platform as a key mechanism for assembling, systematizing and aggregating knowledge on interactions.

Contemporary Developments and Perspectives in International Health Security - Volume 1 [Working Title]

International health security (IHS) encompasses any natural or anthropogenic occurrence that can threaten the safety of human health and well-being. The American College of Academic International Medicine IHS Consensus Group (ACAIM-CG) developed a summative assessment highlighting the main issues that can impact IHS including emerging infectious diseases; chronic health conditions; bioterrorism; planetary changes (volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, wildfires, and climate change); nuclear incidents; information and cyber health; industrialization; globalization; pharmaceutical production; and communication platforms (social media). These concerns can directly and indirectly impact IHS both in the long and short term. When considering IHS, we aim to emphasize the utility of applying a predefined framework to effectively approach health security threats. This framework comprises of prevention, detection, assessment, reporting, response, addressing needs, and the perpetual repetition of the above cycle (inclusive of appropriate mitigation measures). It is hoped that this collective work will provide a foundation for further research within the redefined, expanded scope of IHS.

South African Journal of Science

Zoonoses account for about 25% of the infectious disease burden in low-income countries. 1 Poverty might increase the risk for zoonotic disease where the active human-livestock and human-wildlife interfaces can increase the likelihood of disease transmission. 1 A combined disease burden exists for people in areas such as tropical and subtropical Africa, where there is likelihood of co-infection with zoonotic diseases and other pathogenic or infectious diseases, such as malaria, tuberculosis and HIV. 1 Many endemic zoonoses remain widely neglected in such settings, undetected and underreported, because their impacts are borne largely by impoverished and marginalised communities. 2 Due to these unique contexts, the prevention and management of emerging and endemic zoonotic diseases in many African countries is a complex undertaking needing evidence-based guidance. 1,3 In early 2020, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) took on the urgent task to provide an up-to-date, rapid scientific assessment on zoonotic diseases as part of the UNEP's Frontiers Report Series. 4-6 The goal of the report is to provide relevant information for policymakers on how to 'prevent the next pandemic' by interrogating what is known about zoonotic diseases and how best one can break the chain of transmission. As the world presently faces the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, this timely report helps decisionmakers with evidence-based actions, not only to flatten the curve of COVID-19 incidence, but to answer questions about zoonoses in general and plan for the future. In this Commentary, we give a brief overview of UNEP's latest report 7 and then relate some of the key messages and recommendations for policymakers to a South African context.

Revista Brasileira de Medicina de Família e Comunidade

A maior mobilização recente da comunidade da saúde em relação ao meio ambiente ocorreu este ano. Consistiu em uma carta assinada por mais de 350 organizações de saúde de todo o mundo, incluindo importantes organizações de Medicina de Família e Comunidade. Isto demonstra o crescente entendimento da comunidade científica e da saúde acerca da saúde planetária.

Ecology Letters

This is the author manuscript accepted for publication and has undergone full peer review but has not been through the copyediting, typesetting, pagination and proofreading process, which may lead to differences between this version and the Version of Record. Please cite this article as

Frontiers in Public Health, 2017

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health

Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is applied to infrastructure and other large projects. The European Union EIA Directive (2011/92/EU as amended by 2014/52/EU) requires EIAs to consider the effects that a project might have on human health. The International Association for Impact Assessment and the European Public Health Association prepared a reference paper on public health in EIA to enable the health sector to contribute to this international requirement. We present lessons from this joint action. We review literature on policy analysis, impact assessment and Health Impact Assessment (HIA). We use findings from this review and from the consultation on the reference paper to consider how population and human health should be defined; how the health sector can participate in the EIA process; the relationship between EIA and HIA; what counts as evidence; when an effect should be considered ‘likely’ and ‘significant’; how changes in health should be reported; the risks from a bu...

Applied Research in Quality of Life

Global health may depend upon biodiversity (BD) for well-being, but evaluation is challenging, as cross-cultural data is scarce. International models of the association between biodiversity (BD) and quality of life (QoL), examined whether subjective health is a mediating factor. The biophilia hypothesis was evaluated. Multi

International journal of environmental research and public health, 2016

There is growing scientific and public recognition that human actions, directly and indirectly, have profoundly changed the Earth system, in a still accelerating process, increasingly called the "Anthropocene". Planetary transformation, including of the atmosphere, climate, ecosystems and biodiversity, has enormous implications for human health, many of which are deeply disturbing, especially in low-income settings. A few health consequences of the Anthropocene have been partially recognized, including within environmental epidemiology, but their long-term consequences remain poorly understood and greatly under-rated. For example Syria could be a "sentinel" population, giving a glimpse to a much wider dystopian future. Health-Earth is a research network, co-founded in 2014, which seeks, with other groups, to catalyse a powerful curative response by the wider health community. This paper builds on a symposium presented by Health-Earth members at the 2015 conferenc...

Challenges

Focusing on the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) as a case study, this paper explores the relationship between philanthrocapitalism, economic history, and global and planetary health. The Wellcome Trust is also briefly discussed, chiefly in the context of planetary health. The paper argues that in the last 45 years there has been an increased preference for market-based approaches, often called neoliberalism, particularly in the U.S. and its allies. This has generated greater inequality in many high-income settings and weakened the norm of taxation. This has provided a setting in which philanthrocapitalism has flourished, including the BMGF. The latter has in turn become an important actor for global health, partially balancing the adverse consequences of neoliberalism. Planetary health is here defined as the interaction between global health and global environmental change, including to the climate and other elements of the Earth System. Although the Wellcome Trust has rece...

Sustainability Science

Malnutrition in all forms, ranging from undernourishment to obesity and associated diet-related diseases, is one of the leading causes of death worldwide, while food systems often have major environmental impacts. Rapid global population growth and increases in demands for food and changes in dietary habits create challenges to provide universal access to healthy food without creating negative environmental, economic, and social impacts. This article discusses opportunities for and challenges to sustainable food systems from a human health perspective by making the case for avoiding the transition to unhealthy less sustainable diets (using India as an exemplar), reducing food waste by changing consumer behaviour (with examples from Japan), and using innovations and new technologies to reduce the environmental impact of healthy food production. The article touches upon two of the challenges to achieving healthy sustainable diets for a global population, i.e., reduction on the yield and nutritional quality of crops (in particular vegetables and fruits) due to climate change; and trade-offs between food production and industrial crops. There is an urgent need to develop and implement policies and practices that provide universal access to healthy food choices for a growing world population, whilst reducing the environmental footprint of the global food system.

Cadernos de Saúde Pública

Este é um artigo publicado em acesso aberto (Open Access) sob a licença Creative Commons Attribution, que permite uso, distribuição e reprodução em qualquer meio, sem restrições, desde que o trabalho original seja corretamente citado.

Nature Food

The extent to which humans facilitate zoonotic transmission of infectious diseases is unclear. Human encroachment into wildlife habitats as a consequence of expanding urbanization, cropland area and intensive animal farming is hypothesized to favour the emergence of zoonotic diseases. Here we analyse comprehensive, high-resolution datasets on forest cover, cropland distribution, livestock density, human population, human settlements, bat species' distribution and land-use changes in regions populated by Asian horseshoe bats (>28.5 million km 2)-the species that most commonly carry severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)-related coronaviruses. We identify areas at risk of SARS-related coronavirus outbreaks, showing that areas in China populated by horseshoe bats exhibit higher forest fragmentation and concentrations of livestock and humans than other countries. Our findings indicate that human-livestock-wildlife interactions in China may form hotspots with the potential to increase SARS-related coronavirus transmission from animals to humans.

Medical Teacher

In this commentary, we discuss health professions' education (HPE) leadership in relation to planetary health emergencies, suggesting that an 'eco-ethical leadership' approach is highly relevant. Building on both traditional and more contemporary leadership approaches and the need for HPE to be socially and environmentally accountable, we define the key features of eco-ethical leadership and its underpinning beliefs and values, then expand on these features in terms of leadership at intrapersonal, interpersonal, team, organisational and system levels. Eco-ethical leadership is needed to tackle a range of 'wicked' problemsa changing climate, environmental pollution, deforestation, all of which threaten global biodiversity and human civilisation. Such leadership requires passionate individuals to role model the behaviours and actions that are required to bring people along with them, not least the learners, many of whom are already concerned about their future. Eco-ethical leadership (and followership) offers an integrated approach for HPE, centred around sustainability, values, collaboration, justice, advocacy and, if need be, activism. The environment cannot not wait. Eco-ethical leaders already exist but their numbers are small. They are required in key positions in academia and healthcare to drive the agenda in partnership with learners, many of whom are already environmental advocates and activists.

Sustainability

We live in a time of pressing planetary challenges, many of which threaten catastrophic change to the natural environment and require massive and novel coordinated scientific and societal efforts on an unprecedented scale. Universities and other academic institutions have the opportunity and responsibility to assume a leading role in an era when the destiny of the planet is precisely in the hands of human beings. Drawing on the Planetary Health project promoted by the Rockefeller Foundation and The Lancet, Pompeu Fabra University launched in 2018 the Planetary Wellbeing Initiative, a long-term institutional strategy also animated by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Planetary Wellbeing might be defined as the highest attainable standard of wellbeing for human and non-human beings and their social and natural systems. Developing the potential of these new concepts involves a substantial theoretical and empirical effort in many different fields, all of them inte...

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health

Both climate change and migration present key concerns for global health progress. Despite this, a transparent method for identifying and understanding the relationship between climate change, migration and other contextual factors remains a knowledge gap. Existing conceptual models are useful in understanding the complexities of climate migration, but provide varying degrees of applicability to quantitative studies, resulting in non-homogenous transferability of knowledge in this important area. This paper attempts to provide a critical review of climate migration literature, as well as presenting a new conceptual model for the identification of the drivers of migration in the context of climate change. It focuses on the interactions and the dynamics of drivers over time, space and society. Through systematic, pan-disciplinary and homogenous application of theory to different geographical contexts, we aim to improve understanding of the impacts of climate change on migration. A bri...

Bundesgesundheitsblatt - Gesundheitsforschung - Gesundheitsschutz

ZusammenfassungDie Dringlichkeit der Klima- und Nachhaltigkeitskrise und ihre Auswirkungen auf die menschliche Gesundheit rücken auch im deutschen Gesundheitswesen zunehmend in den Fokus. Um ein weiteres Fortschreiten der Klima- und Nachhaltigkeitskrise zu verhindern, sind tiefgreifende Transformationsprozesse in allen gesellschaftlichen Sektoren notwendig (z. B. Verkehr, Energieerzeugung, Ernährungssystem). Angehörige der Gesundheitsberufe haben auf Basis ihrer ethischen Verpflichtung des Nichtschadens und ihrer guten Vertrauenswerte in der Gesellschaft das Potenzial, einen wichtigen Beitrag zu den notwendigen Transformationsprozessen zu leisten.Damit sie dieses Potenzial zur Gänze ausschöpfen können, sollten Angehörige der Gesundheitsberufe im Rahmen ihrer Aus‑, Fort- und Weiterbildung bei der Entwicklung von Kompetenzen begleitet werden, die zu transformativem Handeln befähigen. Wir führen in diesem Artikel in das Konzept der planetaren Gesundheit ein, das hierfür sowohl inhaltli...

Global Health Action, 2017

Background: In a postwar frontier area in northwestern Nicaragua that was severely hit by Hurricane Mitch in 1998, local stakeholders embarked on and facilitated multi-dimensional development initiatives to break the cycles of poverty. Objective: The aim of this paper is to describe the process of priority-setting, and the strategies, guiding principles, activities, achievements, and lessons learned in these local development efforts from 1990 to 2014 in the Cuatro Santos area, Nicaragua. Methods: Data were derived from project records and a Health and Demographic Surveillance System that was initiated in 2004. The area had 25,893 inhabitants living in 5,966 households in 2014. Results: A participatory process with local stakeholders and community representatives resulted in a long-term strategic plan. Guiding principles were local ownership, political reconciliation, consensus decision-making, social and gender equity, an environmental and public health perspective, and sustainability. Local data were used in workshops with communities to re-prioritise and formulate new goals. The interventions included water and sanitation, house construction, microcredits, environmental protection, school breakfasts, technical training, university scholarships, home gardening, breastfeeding promotion, and maternity waiting homes. During the last decade, the proportion of individuals living in poverty was reduced from 79 to 47%. Primary school enrolment increased from 70 to 98% after the start of the school breakfast program. Under-five mortality was around 50 per 1,000 live births in 1990 and again peaked after Hurricane Mitch and was approaching 20 per 1,000 in 2014. Several of the interventions have been scaled up as national programs. Conclusions: The lessons learned from the Cuatro Santos initiative underline the importance of a bottom-up approach and local ownership of the development process, the value of local data for monitoring and evaluation, and the need for multi-dimensional local interventions to break the cycles of poverty and gain better health and welfare.

Animal-borne or zoonotic human diseases (e.g., SARS, Rabies) represent major health and economic burdens throughout the world, disproportionately impacting poor communities. In 2013-2016, an outbreak of the Ebola virus disease (EVD), a zoonotic disease spread from animal reservoirs caused by the Zaire Ebola virus (EBOV), infected approximately 30,000 people, causing considerable negative social and economic impacts in an unexpected geographical location (Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Liberia). It is not known whether the spatial distribution of this outbreak and unprecedented severity was precipitated by environmental changes and, if so, which areas might be at risk in the future. To better address the major health and economic impacts of zoonotic diseases we develop a system-dynamics approach to capture the impact of future climate, land use and human population change on Ebola (EVD). We create future risk maps for affected areas and predict between a 1.75 and 3.2-fold increase in EVD ...

Nature Communications

Recent outbreaks of animal-borne emerging infectious diseases have likely been precipitated by a complex interplay of changing ecological, epidemiological and socio-economic factors. Here, we develop modelling methods that capture elements of each of these factors, to predict the risk of Ebola virus disease (EVD) across time and space. Our modelling results match previously-observed outbreak patterns with high accuracy, and suggest further outbreaks could occur across most of West and Central Africa. Trends in the underlying drivers of EVD risk suggest a 1.75 to 3.2-fold increase in the endemic rate of animal-human viral spill-overs in Africa by 2070, given current modes of healthcare intervention. Future global change scenarios with higher human population growth and lower rates of socio-economic development yield a 1.63-fold higher likelihood of epidemics occurring as a result of spill-over events. Our modelling framework can be used to target interventions designed to reduce epid...

Deltas in the Anthropocene

All regions of the world through the twentieth century have undergone absolute transformations in peoples' lives: they live longer, have fewer children, and are much more likely to live in towns and cities. While 7

Ecography

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health

Urbanization, costs of green space maintenance, and diminishing connection between people and nature all exert pressures on urban green space. This is regrettable as green space has the potential to create wins for environmental sustainability, health, and health equity. This paper explores this potential triple win and investigates how to increase the use of urban green space through behavior change. A narrative literature review was conducted and was supplemented with literature suggested by experts. Results show that creating well-designed green spaces and stimulating people to use them can indeed deliver this triple win. Providing accessible, attractive, well-maintained green space with room for socialization, and where people feel safe, may increase the opportunity and motivation of people to use it more often. Informing and educating people and organizing activities may increase capability (and motivation) to use green space. Since the use of green space depends on life stage,...

Sustainability

Environmental health is at the intersection between health and the environment. However, it still has a recent (and narrow) history as a scientific area, mainly addressing human biomonitoring and toxicological issues. Only recently additional environmental ‘layers’, other than the traditional chemical, biological and physical environmental determinants, have been considered. This broader perspective of environmental health also encompasses digital, psychosocial, political, socioeconomic and cultural determinants, all of them relevant when considering human health from a planetary health paradigm. This reflects the progressive adoption of a systemic perspective regarding the impact of gains for human health and well-being towards a sustainable environment. It also implies a multi-method and participatory approach to understand the intertwined relationship between environmental changes and human health. In this paper, the broader approach to environmental health is discussed in order ...

Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems

Crop diversification can improve the sustainability of Western agriculture. In particular, pulses are crops that can help both agriculture and the food industry become more ecological, as they reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help reduce animal-based consumption. Today, however, the development of these crops in Europe has been hindered due to lock-in, since major crops have been co-developed to a greater extent in farming and food systems. After briefly reviewing the major mechanisms that lead to this lock-in, this article adopts a co-evolution framework to address the interconnected transition of agriculture and food systems. We explore how current societal trends in the agrifood system offer new opportunities for pulses, and how simultaneous changes both in production and consumption can facilitate this dual transition. Drawing on insights from the literature and interviews with stakeholders in France-taken here as examples-we argue that to develop pulses, strong support is required from public institutions to coordinate and guide the multiple actors involved in the same direction.

Frontiers in public health, 2017

One Health (OH) positions health professionals as agents for change and provides a platform to manage determinants of health that are often not comprehensively captured in medicine or public health alone. However, due to the organization of societies and disciplines, and the sectoral allocation of resources, the development of transdisciplinary approaches requires effort and perseverance. Therefore, there is a need to provide evidence on the added value of OH for governments, researchers, funding bodies, and stakeholders. This paper outlines a conceptual framework of what OH approaches can encompass and the added values they can provide. The framework was developed during a workshop conducted by the "Network for Evaluation of One Health," an Action funded by the European Cooperation in Science and Technology. By systematically describing the various aspects of OH, we provide the basis for measuring and monitoring the integration of disciplines, sectors, and stakeholders in...

Socio-Ecological Practice Research

Increasing recognition of interdependencies of the health of humans, other organisms and ecosystems, and of their importance to socio-ecological systems, necessitates application of integrative concepts such as One Health and EcoHealth. These concepts open new perspectives for research and practice but also generate confusion and divergent opinion, prompting new theories, and call for empirical clarification and evaluation. Through a semi-systematic evaluation of knowledge generation in scientific publications (comprised of literature reviews, conceptual models and analyses of communities of practice), we show how integrative concepts and approaches to health evolve and are adopted. Our findings indicate that while their contexts, goals and rationales vary, integrative concepts of health essentially arise from shared interests in living systems. Despite recent increased attention to ecological and societal aspects of health including broader sustainability issues, the focus remains ...

One Health Outlook

The health of our planet and humanity is threatened by biodiversity loss, disease and climate crises that are unprecedented in human history, driven by our insatiable consumption and unsustainable production patterns, particularly food systems. The One Health approach is a pathway to synergistically addressing outcomes in term of health and sustainability, but gender issues at the One Health and biodiversity nexus are largely ignored.By examining the roles and responsibilities of Indigenous and Local People, and especially women, in conserving natural resources, and the social costs of living at the Human-Animal-Environment interface under current conservation strategies, we show that women bear a disproportionate health, poverty and climate burden, despite having pivotal roles in conserving biodiversity. To mitigate risks of emerging infectious diseases, food insecurity and climate change impacts, a gender perspective has previously been proposed, but implementation lags behind. En...

Global Health Promotion

El mundo, después de la pandemia de la COVID-19, no será el mismo que existía y ni tan siquiera eso es deseable. La reanudación de la "normalidad" (que solo es "normal" para unos pocos) sería el regreso a la producción y el consumo insostenibles, la pérdida de derechos, la exacerbación de las iniquidades y una brutalidad diaria para muchos que luchan por sobrevivir. En América Latina (AL), el fin del mundo ya se anunció incluso antes de la pandemia. Si, desde Bogotá - 1992, la Declaración de Promoción de la Salud denuncia la pobreza como el mayor determinante social de enfermedades en la región, los gobiernos parecen ignorarla, debilitando los sistemas de salud, educación, ciencia y tecnología, transferencia de ingresos y asistencia social bajo los auspicios de la austeridad fiscal, favoreciendo el aumento de la desigualdad. Usando datos de tres países, Argentina, Brasil y Chile: 1) se señalan sus bajas inmunidades sociales anteriores a la pandemia; 2) se analiza...

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health

Global environmental change has degraded ecosystems. Challenges such as climate change, resource depletion (with its huge implications for human health and wellbeing), and persistent social inequalities in health have been identified as global public health issues with implications for both communicable and noncommunicable diseases. This contributes to pressure on healthcare systems, as well as societal systems that affect health. A novel strategy to tackle these multiple, interacting and interdependent drivers of change is required to protect the population’s health. Public health professionals have found that building strong, enduring interdisciplinary partnerships across disciplines can address environment and health complexities, and that developing Environmental and Public Health Tracking (EPHT) systems has been an effective tool. EPHT aims to merge, integrate, analyse and interpret environmental hazards, exposure and health data. In this article, we explain that public health ...

Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2017

This article explores the implications for human health of local interactions between disease, ecosystems and livelihoods. Five interdisciplinary case studies addressed zoonotic diseases in African settings: Rift Valley fever (RVF) in Kenya, human African trypanosomiasis in Zambia and Zimbabwe, Lassa fever in Sierra Leone and henipaviruses in Ghana. Each explored how ecological changes and human-ecosystem interactions affect pathogen dynamics and hence the likelihood of zoonotic spillover and transmission, and how socially differentiated peoples' interactions with ecosystems and animals affect their exposure to disease. Cross-case analysis highlights how these dynamics vary by ecosystem type, across a range from humid forest to semi-arid savannah; the significance of interacting temporal and spatial scales; and the importance of mosaic and patch dynamics. Ecosystem interactions and services central to different people's livelihoods and well-being include pastoralism and agro...

Nature Medicine

The concept of a so-called urban advantage in health ignores the possibility of heterogeneity in health outcomes across cities. Using a harmonized dataset from the SALURBAL project, we describe variability and predictors of life expectancy and proportionate mortality in 363 cities across nine Latin American countries. Life expectancy differed substantially across cities within the same country. Cause-specific mortality also varied across cities, with some causes of death (unintentional and violent injuries and deaths) showing large variation within countries, whereas other causes of death (communicable, maternal, neonatal and nutritional, cancer, cardiovascular disease and other noncommunicable diseases) varied substantially between countries. In multivariable mixed models, higher levels of education, water access and sanitation and less overcrowding were associated with longer life expectancy, a relatively lower proportion of communicable, maternal, neonatal and nutritional deaths ...

Evolutionary applications, 2018

Modern biomedicine has contributed remarkably to the reduction of infectious diseases worldwide, including the eradication of smallpox and the control of common childhood diseases (e.g., polio, measles, rubella) that once claimed millions of lives and caused suffering of tens of millions. This has been made possible through improved diagnostics, surveillance, therapeutics, vaccines, and an associated health system infrastructure. These achievements can be largely

Cities & Health

This article sets the scene for the special issue of Cities & Health Journal on 'Transforming cities and health: policy, innovation and practice.' It focuses on systematic transformations to meet sustainability and climate goals whilst also placing health at the heart of policy change and action. Our intention is to raise broad issues drawing on multiple disciplines and provoke engagement with this area of underachievement. We ask: • How do we achieve action and momentum in transformational change? • What are the key components for future transformations in terms of governance, business models, time and sequencing, scaling, leadership and imagination? • Are there limits and barriers to what can be achieved? • Do these demands require a more radical and fundamental change and strategic direction? In responding we note the policy-action gap and the failure to recognise the complexity in policy responses, the continuing growth of cities and the ongoing inability to address basic health needs, and we speculate about the changes that affect the context in which we work over the next decade. We highlight two case studies, where we are involved, that attempt to close the implementation gap and progress transformations. We then offer some further reflections in relation to research and practice in attempting to transform cities and health together to meet the Paris Agreement on climate change, the implementation of the UN SDGs and actions on biodiversity. In discussion we return to the current pandemic and what this tells us about this moment, future transformations and the possibilities and limits to action.

Nutrients

Planetary boundaries are an important sustainability concept, defining absolute limits for resource use and emissions that need to be respected to avoid major and potentially irreversible earth system change. To remain within the safe operating space for humanity, there is a need for urgent adoption of climate-neutral diets, which make no additional contribution to warming. In the first study of its kind, a new climate metric, the Global Warming Potential Star (GWP*), was used to assess greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with 9341 Australian adult diets obtained from the Australian Health Survey. Dietary climate footprints averaged 3.4 kg CO2-equivelent per person per day, with total energy intake explaining around one quarter of the variation. Energy-dense and nutrient-poor discretionary foods contributed around one third. With lower climate footprint food choices, a diet consistent with current Australian dietary guidelines had a 42% lower climate footprint. Currently, it i...

EcoHealth

Allergy

Allergies to cats are the most common mammalian-origin allergy in humans 1-3 and affect approximately 1 in 5 adults worldwide. 4,5 Fel d 1 is the major cat allergen, accounting for up to 96% of human allergic sensitization to cats and 60%-90% of the overall antigenicity of cats and cat dander. 2,5-9 Traditional care pathways for cat allergies focus on treating patients who are exposed to cat allergens. The following review expands on information presented during a sponsored symposium at the European Academy of Allergy and Clinical Immunology (EAACI) Annual Congress on June 4, 2019, in Lisbon, Portugal. The symposium, titled "Keep the cat, changes the care pathway: a transformational approach to managing cat allergy," presented a research

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health

Given the drastic changes in our lifestyles and ecosystems worldwide, the potential health effects of natural environments have grown into a highly pervasive topic. Recent scientific findings suggest beneficial effects from nature exposure on human immune responses. This review aims at providing a comprehensive overview of literature published on immunomodulatory effects of nature exposure by inhalation of natural substances. A systematic database search was performed in SCOPUS and PubMed. The quality and potential bias of included studies (n = 33) were assessed by applying the EPHPP (Effective Public Health Practice Project) tool for human studies and the ARRIVE (Animal Research: Reporting of In Vivo Experiments) and SYRCLE (Systematic Review Centre for Laboratory Animal Experimentation) tools for animal studies. The synthesis of reviewed studies points to positive effects of nature exposure on immunological health parameters; such as anti-inflammatory, anti-allergic, anti-asthmati...

Atmosphere

Increasingly, the potential short and long-term impacts of climate change on human health and wellbeing are being demonstrated. However, other environmental change factors, particularly relating to the natural environment, need to be taken into account to understand the totality of these interactions and impacts. This paper provides an overview of ongoing research in the Health Protection Research Unit (HPRU) on Environmental Change and Health, particularly around the positive and negative effects of the natural environment on human health and well-being and primarily within a UK context. In addition to exploring the potential increasing risks to human health from water-borne and vector-borne diseases and from exposure to aeroallergens such as pollen, this paper also demonstrates the potential opportunities and co-benefits to human physical and mental health from interacting with the natural environment. The involvement of a Health and Environment Public Engagement (HEPE) group as a...

Challenges

I have been involved in studying and working within what is now called the Anthropocene for almost 50 years, and in all that time, not only have we failed to make much progress, but the state of the Earth’s ecosystems has generally worsened. Yet somehow we must create a world in which everyone on Earth has good health and a good quality of life—a matter of social justice—while living within the physical and ecological constraints of the one small planet that is our home; this is the focus of the new field of planetary health. Our worsening situation is not due to lack of knowledge, science and technology; in broad terms, we knew most of the challenges and many of the needed solutions back in the 1970s. Instead, the challenges we face are social, rooted in cultural values, political ideologies, legal and economic systems, ethical principles and spiritual/religious beliefs. Therefore, we have to move beyond science and technology and address these broader socio-cultural issues by enga...

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health

The “Earthrise” photograph, taken on the 1968 Apollo 8 mission, became one of the most significant images of the 20th Century. It triggered a profound shift in environmental awareness and the potential for human unity—inspiring the first Earth Day in 1970. Taking inspiration from these events 50 years later, we initiated Project Earthrise at our 2020 annual conference of inVIVO Planetary Health. This builds on the emergent concept of planetary health, which provides a shared narrative to integrate rich and diverse approaches from all aspects of society towards shared solutions to global challenges. The acute catastrophe of the COVID-19 pandemic has drawn greater attention to many other interconnected global health, environmental, social, spiritual, and economic problems that have been underappreciated or neglected for decades. This is accelerating opportunities for greater collaborative action, as many groups now focus on the necessity of a “Great Transition”. While ambitious integr...

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences

Public health practitioners require measures to evaluate how vulnerable populations are to diseases, especially for zoonoses (i.e. diseases transmitted from animals to humans) given their pandemic potential. These measures would be valuable to support strategic and operational decision making and allocation of resources. Although vulnerability is well defined for natural hazards, for public health threats the concept remains undetermined. Here, we develop new methodologies to: (i) quantify the impact of zoonotic diseases and the capacity of countries to cope with these diseases, and (ii) combine these two measures (impact and capacity) into one overall vulnerability indicator. The adaptive capacity is calculated from estimations of disease mortality, although the method can be adapted for diseases with no or low mortality but high morbidity. As an example, we focused on the vulnerability of Nigeria and Sierra Leone to Lassa Fever and Ebola. We develop a simple analytical form that c...

FACETS

Ocean conditions can affect human health in a variety of ways that are often overlooked and unappreciated. Oceans adjacent to Canada are affected by many anthropogenic stressors, with implications for human health and well-being. Climate change further escalates these pressures and can expose coastal populations to unique health hazards and distressing conditions. However, current research efforts, education or training curriculums, and policies in Canada critically lack explicit consideration of these ocean–public health linkages. The objective of this paper is to present multiple disciplinary perspectives from academics and health practitioners to inform the development of future directions for research, capacity development, and policy and practice at the interface of oceans and human health in Canada. We synthesize major ocean and human health linkages in Canada, and identify climate-sensitive drivers of change, drawing attention to unique considerations in Canada. To support ef...

Sustainability

In light of the coronavirus pandemic, we invite readers to a reflection over the aim and use of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the determination of the new biodiversity targets in relation to health issues. Starting with a brief overview of the initiatives to consider health and the environment in the international arena before the adoption of SDGs, we show how the pandemic shed a new light on the need for research on the interlinkages of human and animal health and environmental changes. We examine underlying elements of the dialogue between science and policy, then we suggest considering SDGs as tool for the service of the environment, wellbeing and justice. We advocate for the translation of planetary health principles into action, together with the consideration of planetary boundaries, to redefine an adaptive environmental law for the sake of social justice and the health of the planet.

Nutrients

Urbanization, population aging, and climatic changes have mostly contributed to nutrition transition and, consequently, to effects of food habits on the epidemic of chronic non-communicable diseases (NCDs), especially cancer. Climatic changes are negatively affecting crop production, particularly biodiversity, leading to reduced food choices and, consequently, nutritional value and the protection conferred from consumption of a variety of nutrients essential in a healthy diet. This brief review analyzes the possible link between rapid demographic changes, climatic and environmental crises, and the current food system as possible factors contributing to the role of nutrition transition in the onset of cancer.

Land Use - Assessing the Past, Envisioning the Future [Working Title]

For the last two decades, the Amazon development debate has been torn between attempts to reconcile two rather opposing views of land use: on one hand, a vision of setting aside large tracts of the Amazon forests for conservation purposes (referred hereafter to as The First Way) and, on the other hand, seeking a 'sustainable' resource-intensive development, mostly through agriculture/livestock, energy and mining (referred hereafter to as The Second Way). The decrease of Brazilian Amazon deforestation from 2005 to 2014 (about 75% decline) opens a window of opportunity to conceive a novel sustainable development paradigm: The Amazonia Third Way initiative (A3W). It can represent a new opportunity emerging to protect the Amazon ecosystems and the indigenous and traditional peoples who are their custodians and at the same time develop a vibrant, socially inclusive biodiversity-driven 'green economy' in the Amazon by harnessing Nature's value through the physical, digital and biological technologies of the 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR). 4IR technologies are increasingly harnessing these assets across many industries from pharmaceutical to energy, food, cosmetics, materials and mobility, and making profits. A3W addresses ways to channel to the Amazon the benefits of the 4IR for the creation of bio-industries and local development as it protects the forests.

Cities & Health, 2017

The Cities and Health journal sees its launch in 2017. Looking back over half a century of growth and global expansion in economic activity, although there have been societal benefits, negative impacts are starting to take their toll on planetary resources and human health. As we enter what is being termed The Anthropocene, the city is becoming the preferred habitat for humanity. The imprint of city lifestyles, in terms of both resource use and waste, is found across the globe, threatening the ecosystem services that support our health. In cities themselves, due to risks and challenges to health, we are witnessing a rise in non-communicable disease, twinned with infectious disease for the many who live increasingly in informal or slum urban development. High levels of health inequity are found within urban populations. The resultant health problems are placing increasing strain on health services, with pressure only set to increase due to continuing urbanization and ageing populations. Evidence increasingly demonstrates that many aspects of city and neighbourhood form, urban and transport design, and residential environments play an important role in mediating health and health equity outcomes. The new journal Cities & Health is being launched to support political, academic and technical leadership and transdisciplinarity in this field. For this endeavor we will need to reexamine the nature of evidence required before we act; to explore how academics, policymakers, practitioners and communities can best collaborate using the city as a laboratory for change; and to develop capacity building for healthier placemaking at professional and community level.

Wellcome Open Research

Poor quality urban environments substantially increase non-communicable disease. Responsibility for associated decision-making is dispersed across multiple agents and systems: fast growing urban authorities are the primary gatekeepers of new development and change in the UK, yet the driving forces are remote private sector interests supported by a political economy focused on short-termism and consumption-based growth. Economic valuation of externalities is widely thought to be fundamental, yet evidence on how to value and integrate it into urban development decision-making is limited, and it forms only a part of the decision-making landscape. Researchers must find new ways of integrating socio-environmental costs at numerous key leverage points across multiple complex systems. This mixed-methods study comprises of six highly integrated work packages. It aims to develop and test a multi-action intervention in two urban areas: one on large-scale mixed-use development, the other on ma...

Frontiers in veterinary science, 2018

Challenges calling for integrated approaches to health, such as the One Health (OH) approach, typically arise from the intertwined spheres of humans, animals, and ecosystems constituting their environment. Initiatives addressing such wicked problems commonly consist of complex structures and dynamics. As a result of the EU COST Action (TD 1404) "Network for Evaluation of One Health" (NEOH), we propose an evaluation framework anchored in systems theory to address the intrinsic complexity of OH initiatives and regard them as subsystems of the context within which they operate. Typically, they intend to influence a system with a view to improve human, animal, and environmental health. The NEOH evaluation framework consists of four overarching elements, namely: (1) the definition of the initiative and its context, (2) the description of the theory of change with an assessment of expected and unexpected outcomes, (3) the process evaluation of operational and supporting infrastr...

Studies in Political Economy

The COVID-19 pandemic has focused renewed public attention on the risks and harms generated by a globalized, industrialized, and corporatized food system. This crisis reinvigorates the need for a research agenda that identifies compelling ways of holding key actors in the corporate food regime accountable for creating and profiting from systemic risk in the food system. We draw upon theoretical conceptions of "risk," "rights," and "(ir)responsibility" to raise questions about how to move beyond narrow liberal notions of responsibility for postpandemic recovery. Redefining responsibility could be transformative in the pursuit of corporate accountability for past and present harms, and in financing pathways towards less risky, more resilient, and more just food systems of the future.

Physiotherapy Theory and Practice

Background:Global environmental change is fundamentally altering the composition and functioning of our planetary ecosystem. Effectively presenting the largest threat to the health of present and future generations, these changes and their health impacts are forcing us to think and practice healthcare in much broader terms than ever before. Objective:In this article, we provide an early outline for a radically otherwise, yet strangely familiar, environmental physiotherapy developed through a succession of carefully developed arguments. Discussion:We show how an underpinning belief in human exceptionalism has engendered an exploitative relationship with our natural planetary environment that has both shaped Western science and healthcare and led to our current environmental health crisis. Building on the dependence of human health on our planetary ecosystem, approaches like planetary health hold great promise for a corresponding, paradigmatic turn in healthcare. They fall short of this however, where they perpetuate anthropocentric interests and interventionist practices that have underpinned healthcare to date. Drawing on ethical and post-human philosophies we argue against human exceptionalism and for a solidarity that includes other-than-humans as the primary characteristic of planetary existence. Conclusion:Building on this foundation, we provide an early outline for a radically otherwise, yet strangely familiar, environmental physiotherapy, grounded in ecological awareness, multispecies justice, and a range of consonant practices of passivity and accompaniment, conceived as an alternative to the commonplace interventionism of healthcare.

Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2017

Zoonotic diseases will maintain a high level of public policy attention in the coming decades. From the spectre of a global pandemic to anxieties over agricultural change, urbanization, social inequality and threats to natural ecosystems, effectively preparing and responding to endemic and emerging diseases will require technological, institutional and social innovation. Much current discussion emphasizes the need for a 'One Health' approach: bridging disciplines and sectors to tackle these complex dynamics. However, as attention has increased, so too has an appreciation of the practical challenges in linking multi-disciplinary, multi-sectoral research with policy, action and impact. In this commentary paper, we reflect on these issues with particular reference to the African sub-continent. We structure the themes of our analysis on the existing literature, expert opinion and 11 interviews with leading One Health scholars and practitioners, conducted at an international symp...

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health

Human health and wellbeing and the health of the biosphere are inextricably linked. The state of Earth’s life-support systems, including freshwater, oceans, land, biodiversity, atmosphere, and climate, affect human health. At the same time, human activities are adversely affecting natural systems. This review paper is the outcome of an interdisciplinary workshop under the auspices of the Future Earth Health Knowledge Action Network (Health KAN). It outlines a research agenda to address cross-cutting knowledge gaps to further understanding and management of the health risks of these global environmental changes through an expert consultation and review process. The research agenda has four main themes: (1) risk identification and management (including related to water, hygiene, sanitation, and waste management); food production and consumption; oceans; and extreme weather events and climate change. (2) Strengthening climate-resilient health systems; (3) Monitoring, surveillance, and ...

2017

Limited information is available on the perceptions of stakeholders concerning the health co-benefits of greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reductions. The purpose of this study was to investigate the perceptions of urban residents on the health co-benefits involving GHG abatement and related influencing factors in three cities in China. Beijing, Ningbo and Guangzhou were selected for this survey. Participants were recruited from randomly chosen committees, following quotas for gender and age in proportion to the respective population shares. Chi-square or Fisher’s exact tests were employed to examine the associations between socio-demographic variables and individuals’ perceptions of the health co-benefits related to GHG mitigation. Unconditional logistic regression analysis was performed to investigate the influencing factors of respondents’ awareness about the health co-benefits. A total of 1159 participants were included in the final analysis, of which 15.9% reported that they were f...

Infectious diseases of poverty, 2017

The threat of a rapidly changing planet - of coupled social, environmental and climatic change - pose new conceptual and practical challenges in responding to vector-borne diseases. These include non-linear and uncertain spatial-temporal change dynamics associated with climate, animals, land, water, food, settlement, conflict, ecology and human socio-cultural, economic and political-institutional systems. To date, research efforts have been dominated by disease modeling, which has provided limited practical advice to policymakers and practitioners in developing policies and programmes on the ground. In this paper, we provide an alternative biosocial perspective grounded in social science insights, drawing upon concepts of vulnerability, resilience, participation and community-based adaptation. Our analysis was informed by a realist review (provided in the Additional file 2) focused on seven major climate-sensitive vector-borne diseases: malaria, schistosomiasis, dengue, leishmaniasi...

Sustainability, 2020

This paper focuses on the competencies in environmental health acquired by students during compulsory education. Questionnaires addressing environmental health problems were completed by 923 students of primary and secondary schools from five different Spanish regions. The results for five challenging situations related to hunger, consumerism, climate change, pollution in the cities and allergies are analysed according to the internal coherence of each sub-competency, i.e., addressing knowledge, skills and attitudes towards these topics. Our results show that problems related to air and water pollution were the most commonly described by the students. Focusing on competency achievement, the higher the educational level, the higher the score students obtained, especially regarding pollution and climate change, two problems that appear directly in the school curriculum. The complexity of the concept of environmental health matches with the necessary holistic perspective of the Sustainable Development Goals in a polyhedral approach including as many factors (facets) as necessary to complete the approach to this evolving concept.

Journal of Urban Health

Environmental Research Letters, 2021

Environmental degradation has been associated with increased burden of diseases such as malaria, diarrhea, and malnutrition. As a result, some have argued that continuing ecosystem change could undermine successes in global health investments. Here we conduct an empirical study to investigate this concern. Child deaths due to diarrhea have more than halved since the year 2000, partly due to increased access to improved water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH). We examine how the effectiveness of a water quality treatment may vary as a function of upstream watershed condition. We use data on occurrence of diarrhea and point-of-use water treatment methods from the Demographic and Health Surveys for Haiti and Honduras. We integrate these data with a variable that reflects the influence of upstream tree cover on surface water quality. Point-of-use chlorination is significantly associated with 3.4 percentage points reduction in prevalence of diarrheal disease on average. However, we only det...

Responsible Innovation in Health (RIH) represents an emerging Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) approach that could support not only the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) "Good health and well-being" but also other SDGs. Since few studies have conceptualized the relationships between RIH and the SDGs, our goal was to inductively develop a framework to identify knowledge gaps and areas for further reflections. Our exploratory study involved: (1) performing a web-based horizon scanning to identify health innovations with responsibility features; and (2) illustrating through empirical examples how RIH addresses the SDGs. A total of 105 innovations were identified: up to 43% were developed by non-profit organizations, universities or volunteers; 46.7% originated from the United States; and 64.5% targeted countries in Africa, Central and South America and South Asia. These innovations addressed health problems such as newborn care (15.5%), reduced mobility and limb amputation (14.5%), infectious diseases (10.9%), pregnancy and delivery care (9.1%) and proper access to care and drugs (7.3%). Several of these innovations were aligned with SDG10-Reduced inequalities (87%), SDG17-Partnerships for the goals (54%), SDG1-No poverty (15%) and SDG4-Quality education (11%). A smaller number of them addressed sustainable economic development goals such as SDG11-Sustainable cities and communities (9%) and SDG9-Industry and innovation (6%), and environmental sustainability goals such as SDG7-Affordable and clean energy (7%) and SDG6-Clean water and sanitation (5%). Three examples show how RIH combines entrepreneurship and innovation in novel ways to address the determinants of health, thereby contributing to SDG5 (Gender), SDG10 (Inequalities), SDG4 (Education) and SDG8 (Decent work), and indirectly supporting SDG7 (Clean energy) and SDG13 (Climate action). Further research should examine how alternative business models, social enterprises and social finance may support the STI approach behind RIH.

BMC Public Health, 2021

Background Segregation of household waste at the source is an effective and sustainable strategy for management of municipal waste. However, household segregation levels remain insufficient as waste management approaches are mostly top down and lack local support. The realisation and recognition of effective, improved and adequate waste management may be one of the vital drivers for attaining environmental protection and improved health and well-being. The presence of a local level motivator may promote household waste segregation and ultimately pro-environmental behaviour. The present cluster randomized control trial aims to understand if volunteer based information on waste segregation (I-MISS) can effectively promote increased waste segregation practices at the household level when compared with existing routine waste segregation information in an urban Indian setting. Methods This paper describes the protocol of an 18 month two-group parallel,cluster randomised controlled triali...

Sustainability

Many Mediterranean countries, including Lebanon, are experiencing a shift in food consumption away from the traditional Mediterranean diet (MD), concomitant with the escalating burden of non-communicable diseases and dwindling environmental resources. Objective: to examine the adherence to the MD and its association with environmental footprints (EFPs), including water use, energy use, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, among Lebanese adults. Data of Lebanese adults were drawn from the national food consumption survey (n = 2610). Assessment of dietary intake was conducted using a food-frequency questionnaire. Adherence to the MD was examined using four published MD scores. Metrics for the EFPs were calculated using a review of existing life cycle assessments (LCAs). For all MD scores, less than 13% of participants were in the highest tertile. After adjustments for covariates, two of the MD scores were associated with lower water use. For GHG, significant inverse associations were o...

PLOS ONE, 2016

Food production is a major driver of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, water and land use, and dietary risk factors are contributors to non-communicable diseases. Shifts in dietary patterns can therefore potentially provide benefits for both the environment and health. However, there is uncertainty about the magnitude of these impacts, and the dietary changes necessary to achieve them. We systematically review the evidence on changes in GHG emissions, land use, and water use, from shifting current dietary intakes to environmentally sustainable dietary patterns. We find 14 common sustainable dietary patterns across reviewed studies, with reductions as high as 70-80% of GHG emissions and land use, and 50% of water use (with medians of about 20-30% for these indicators across all studies) possible by adopting sustainable dietary patterns. Reductions in environmental footprints were generally proportional to the magnitude of animal-based food restriction. Dietary shifts also yielded modest benefits in all-cause mortality risk. Our review reveals that environmental and health benefits are possible by shifting current Western diets to a variety of more sustainable dietary patterns.

Public Health Reviews, 2016

Future Earth is an international research platform providing the knowledge and support to accelerate our transformations to a sustainable world. Future Earth 2025 Vision identified eight key focal challenges, and challenge #6 is to "Improve human health by elucidating, and finding responses to, the complex interactions amongst environmental change, pollution, pathogens, disease vectors, ecosystem services, and people's livelihoods, nutrition and well-being." Several studies, including the Rockefeller Foundation/Lancet Planetary Health Commission Report of 2015, the World Health Organization/Convention on Biological Diversity report and those by oneHEALTH (former ecoHEALTH), have been conducted over the last 30 years. Knowledge-Action Networks (KANs) are the frameworks to apply Future Earth principles of research to related activities that respond to societal challenges. Future Earth Health Knowledge-Action Network will connect health researchers with other natural and social scientists, health and environmental policy professionals and leaders in government, the private sector and civil society to provide research-based solutions based on better, integrated understanding of the complex interactions between a changing global environment and human health. It will build regional capacity to enhance resilience, protect the environment and avert serious threats to health and will also contribute to achieving Sustainable Development Goals. In addition to the initial partners, Future Earth Health Knowledge-Action Network will further nourish collaboration with other ongoing , leading research programmes outside Future Earth, by encouraging them in active participation.

Public Health Reviews, 2016

Buildings and Cities, 2021

With more than half the world’s population living in cities, understanding how the built environment impacts human health at different urban scales is crucial. To be able to shape cities for health, an understanding is needed of planetary health impacts, which encompass the human health impacts of human-caused disruptions on the Earth’s natural ecosystems. This umbrella review maps health evidence across the spatial scales of the built environment (building; neighbourhood; and wider system, including city, regional and planetary levels), with a specific focus on urban housing. Systematic reviews published in English between January 2011 and December 2020 were searched across 20 databases, with 1176 articles identified and 124 articles screened for inclusion. Findings suggests that most evidence reports on health determinants at the neighbourhood level, such as greenspace, physical and socio-economic conditions, transport infrastructure and access to local services. Physical health o...

Proceedings of the Nutrition Society, 2016

Red and processed meat (RPM) intake varies widely globally. In some high-income countries (HIC) the last decade has witnessed an overall decline or stabilisation in the consumption of RPM, in contrast to emerging economies where its consumption continues to increase with rising income and rapid urbanisation. The production and consumption of RPM have become major concerns regarding the environmental impacts of livestock in particular, but also because of associations between high RPM consumption and diet-related non-communicable disease. Therefore, it is important to identify socioeconomic and demographic drivers of the consumption of RPM. This paper explores how consumption of RPM differs with age, gender, socioeconomic status and in different global contexts. There are some key socioeconomic and demographic patterns in RPM consumption. Men tend to consume RPM more often and in higher quantities, and there is evidence of a social gradient in HIC, with lower socioeconomic groups con...

Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals Through Sustainable Food Systems, 2019

Current food systems are in need of profound changes. The number of hungry people recently rose to over 820 million due to climate-related conflicts and displacement. Two billion people in the world are overweight or obese and are at risk of the diseases related to over-consumption of food, an issue that affects both the developed and developing world. The food sector operates—and depends on—a natural environment profoundly under stress and faces increasing competition for its resources between different sectors. Food is the largest freshwater user, accounts for one third of GhG emissions and is responsible for land degradation, biodiversity loss and pollution. Sustainable food systems are at the core of the 2030 Agenda of the United Nations, signed by 193 countries in 2015, as food is directly or indirectly connected to all the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Against this context, the present chapter outlines the main challenges that the global food system currently faces in ...

Estudos Avançados

RESUMO O atual formato de desenvolvimento humano gera severos impactos ambientais, os quais repercutem negativamente na saúde; dentre eles, a intensificação da transmissão de doenças infecciosas, epidemias e pandemias, como a Covid-19. A forma como lidamos com a biodiversidade e os ecossistemas, em conjunto com as mudanças climáticas, viabiliza interfaces e corredores por onde ocorrem diversificação, spillover e circulação de vírus. Por esses meios, o Sars-CoV-2 poderá invadir biomas brasileiros, transformando florestas como a Amazônia em imensos reservatórios, de onde o coronavírus poderá retornar ainda mais agressivo à saúde.

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health

Earth’s life-supporting ecosystems are integral to human and planetary health. Ecosystem services connect ecosystem functions to human wellbeing. The complex, multifaceted socio-ecological challenges of ecosystem decline necessitate a transdisciplinary approach, including the active and meaningful engagement and participation of local communities. Communities uniquely possess expert local knowledge, which, when integrated into policy development and community planning, has the potential to enhance and sustain ecosystem benefits for health and wellbeing. Community-informed mapping tools provide an opportunity for integrating science, policy, and public participation in data collection. However, there is a dearth of community-informed mapping tools demonstrating the interconnection of the ecological and social determinants of health at a place-based level. This paper presents a study that employs a community-based participatory research approach to mapping local knowledge systems on E...

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health

Multiple sectors—health and non-health—can determine the health and well-being of people and the condition of the socio-ecological environment on which it depends. At the climate and human health nexus, a systems-based understanding of climate change and health should inform all stages of the policy process from problem conceptualization to design, implementation, and evaluation. Such an understanding should guide countries, their partners, and donors to incorporate health in strategic climate actions based on how health is affected by, and plays a role in, the dynamic interactions across economic, environmental, and societal domains. A systems-based approach to sustainable development has been widely promoted but operationalizing it for project level and policy development and implementation has not been well articulated. Such an approach is especially valuable for informing how to address climate change and health together through policy actions which can achieve multiple, mutuall...

Global Health Action

Child health is taking the back seat in development strategies. In summarising a newly released collaborative report, this paper calls for a novel conceptual model where child health takes centre stage in relation to the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals. It lays out five principles by which renewed effort and focus would yield the most benefit for children and adolescents. These include: redefining global child health in the post-2015 era by placing children and adolescents at the centre of the Sustainable Development Goals; striving for equity; realising the rights of the child to thrive throughout the life-course; facilitating evidence informed policy-making and implementation; and capitalising on interlinkages within the SDGs to galvanise multisectoral action. These five principles offer models that together have the potential of improving design, return and quality of global child health programs while re-energising the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals.

Nutrients

Food choices and eating behaviours have a large impact on both human and planetary health. Recently, the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations and the World Health Organisation have developed a list of 16 guiding principles to achieve sustainable healthy diets (SHDs). They proposed that development of food-based dietary guidelines (FBDGs) should be a core element in the implementation of these SHDs in each country. The objective of this review is to explore the degree of alignment of current FBDGs to these guiding principles. A total of 43 FBDGs, written or translated into English, were collected from the online repository developed by the FAO and were analysed for their adherence to each of the guiding principles. Results were stratified for period of publication and geographical macro-area. Overall, there were high levels of inclusion of the factors related to health outcomes, especially in the most recent FBDGs. Conversely, environmental impact and socio-...

People and Nature

The seas and oceans of the Earth are vast, covering 70% of the planet's surface, and from one perspective, forming a single unitary Ocean with global significance (National Ocean Service, 2018). This has perhaps led past generations to think that such an enormous seawater ecosystem can withstand whatever impacts human activities generate. However, around 75 years ago, the concerns of a few individuals began to raise doubts in the public consciousness. Notable pioneers such as Rachel Carson (of 'Silent Spring' fame) highlighted emerging risks including widespread global warming and the contamination of the oceans in her seminal book 'The Sea Around Us' published in 1951 (Carson, 1951). As the World's human population has increased from 2.5 billion at that time to more than 7.6 billion today, the range and intensity of threats to human health and well-being arising in the seas and oceans, have grown. This is documented in a myriad of studies identifying marine pollution, overfishing, hypoxic dead areas, coastal

Frontiers in Marine Science

Appendix 1: Figure S1. Four alternative futures, modified from Merrie et al. (2018) to include popular culture analogs. Scenarios correspond to the shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs) developed for climate change research (O'Neill et al. 2017). Axes are socially fragmented to connected (y-axis), and environmentally collapsed to sustained (x-axis). This figure was useful for our group in thinking about possible future scenarios, and we include it here to provide others with tangible and provocative context for the types of scenarios being discussed.

Health Promotion Journal of Australia

Earlier this year, the Australian federal election was touted as the "climate election," where climate change surfaced as a key political focus. In parallel to election campaigning,

Health Promotion Journal of Australia

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.

2021

Mental illness is a leading contributor to the global burden of disease, but there is limited understanding of how it is influenced by socio-ecological context, particularly in the global south. We asked how interactions with ecological systems influence stressors associated with psychological distress in a rural Ugandan case study. We conducted and thematically analyzed 45 semi-structured interviews with residents of Nyabyeya Parish, Masindi District. Our results suggest that poverty and food insecurity were the primary reported causes of “thinking too much” and related idioms of psychological distress. The expansion of commercial agriculture may have been associated with the contraction of subsistence farming, reportedly exacerbating poverty and food insecurity among poorer households but contributing incomes to wealthier ones. Furthermore, households bordering a conservation area reported that crop losses from wildlife contributed to food insecurity. However, forest resources wer...

BMJ Global Health

IntroductionResilient health systems have the capacity to continue providing health services to meet the community’s diverse health needs following floods. This capacity is related to how the community manages its own health needs and the community and health system’s joined capacities for resilience. Yet little is known about how community participation influences health systems resilience. The purpose of this study was to understand how community management of pregnancy and childbirth care during floods is contributing to the system’s capacity to absorb, adapt or transform as viewed through a framework on health systems resilience.MethodsEight focus group discussions and 17 semi-structured interviews were conducted with community members and leaders who experienced pregnancy or childbirth during recent flooding in rural Cambodia. The data were analysed by thematic analysis and discussed in relation to the resilience framework.ResultsThe theme ‘Responsible for the status quo’ refle...

Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution

Humans have fundamentally altered the cycling of multiple elements on a global scale. These changes impact the structure and function of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, with many implications for human health. Most prior studies linking biogeochemical changes to human health have evaluated the effects of single elements in isolation. However, the relative availability of multiple elements often determines the biological impact of shifts in the concentration of a single element. The balance of multiple elements is the focus of ecological stoichiometry, which highlights the importance of elemental ratios in biological function across all systems and scales of organization. Consequently, ecological stoichiometry is a promising framework to inform research on the links between global changes to elemental cycles and human health. We synthesize evidence that elemental ratios link global change with human health through biological processes occurring at two scales: in the environment (natural ecosystems and food systems) and within the human body. Elemental ratios in the environment impact the key ecosystem processes of productivity and biodiversity, both of which contribute to the production of food, toxins, allergens, and parasites. Elemental ratios in diet impact processes within the human body, including the function and interactions of the immune system, parasites, and the non-pathogenic microbiome. Collectively, these stoichiometric effects contribute to a wide range of non-infectious and infectious diseases. By describing stoichiometric mechanisms linking global change, ecological processes, and human health, we hope to inspire future empirical and theoretical research on this theme.

Disaster Prevention and Management: An International Journal

Purpose The rapid deterioration of the earth’s natural ecosystems are increasing the risk of human morbidity and mortality worldwide. Hydrometeorological hazards are concentrating contaminants from the damaged environment and exposing large vulnerable populations to life threating illnesses and death. This study performed a retrospective health risk assessment on two recent events where such impacts unfolded, namely, the 2015 south east Equatorial Asia smoke haze disaster and the 2016 Melbourne thunderstorm asthma epidemic. The purpose of this paper is to test if the characterisation of health risk warranted earlier and more effective risk reduction activities prior to the disasters occurring. Design/methodology/approach A retrospective health risk characterisation assessment was performed combing United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Risk Health Aspect in Disaster Risk Assessment (2017) framework with a thematic and targeted word literature review to identify the level...

BMC Health Services Research, 2022

Background Since climate change, pandemics and population mobility are challenging healthcare systems, an empirical and integrative research to studying and help improving the health systems resilience is needed. We present an interdisciplinary and mixed-methods research protocol, ClimHB, focusing on vulnerable localities in Bangladesh and Haiti, two countries highly sensitive to global changes. We develop a protocol studying the resilience of the healthcare system at multiple levels in the context of climate change and variability, population mobility and the Covid-19 pandemic, both from an institutional and community perspective. Methods The conceptual framework designed is based on a combination of Levesque’s Health Access Framework and the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office’s Resilience Framework to address both outputs and the processes of resilience of healthcare systems. It uses a mixed-method sequential exploratory research design combining multi-sites and longitud...

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2020

We undertook a scoping study to map the relevant evidence, summarise the findings, and to help identify gaps in the knowledge base on the relationship between land use/land-use change and human health in Australia. Our systematic search of the scientific literature for relevant articles up to August 2020 identified 37 articles. All 37 articles meeting our inclusion criteria were published after 2003. Zoonotic or vector-borne disease constituted the most common health outcome type studied. Agriculture/grazing was the land use/land-use change type most frequently represented in the literature, followed by coal seam gas extraction and open cut coal mining. The relationship between land use/land use change and human health in Australia, is not conclusive from the existing evidence. This is because of (1) a lack of comprehensive coverage of the topic, (2) a lack of coverage of the geography, (3) a lack of coverage of study types, and (4) conflicting results in the research already undert...

Encyclopedia of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, 2021

Sustainable healthy diets are diets that promote all dimensions of individuals' health and wellbeing with minimal environmental pressure and impact. They are accessible, affordable, safe, and equitable and are culturally acceptable (FAO and WHO 2019).

Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2021

The ability to rapidly detect and respond to wildlife morbidity and mortality events is critical for reducing threats to wildlife populations. Surveillance systems that use pre-diagnostic clinical data can contribute to the early detection of wildlife morbidities caused by a multitude of threats, including disease and anthropogenic disturbances. Here, we demonstrate proof of concept for use of a wildlife disease surveillance system, the ‘Wildlife Morbidity and Mortality Event Alert System’, that integrates pre-diagnostic clinical data in near real-time from a network of wildlife rehabilitation organizations, for early and enhanced detection of unusual wildlife morbidity and mortality events. The system classifies clinical pre-diagnostic data into relevant clinical classifications based on a natural language processing algorithm, generating alerts when more than the expected number of cases is recorded across the rehabilitation network. We demonstrated the effectiveness and efficienc...

Witness: The Canadian Journal of Critical Nursing Discourse, 2021

Calls for nursing action to address climate change are resounding throughout the nursing community, yet many nurses feel ill-prepared to engage in climate action. As a collective practice discipline, we argue that nursings’ internalized a rigid view of what nursing is and, through self-disciplining practices, actively police our knowledge and practice to conform within a bounded domain that fails to view global issues, such as climate change, as being within the scope of nursing. To build nurses’ climate action capacity, we draw on Deleuze and Guarttari’s (1987) concept of rhizomatic assemblages to make an explicit connection between health and climate change, but also how climate action is a moral imperative in the scope of nursing education and practice. Using examples in the four domains of nursing - education, practice, research, and policy, we present how nurses can engage in coordinated and collaborative efforts both within and outside of ‘traditional’ nursing practice to addr...

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2022

Climate change can have a complex impact that also influences human and animal health. For example, climate change alters the conditions for pathogens and vectors of zoonotic diseases. Signs of this are the increasing spread of the West Nile and Usutu viruses and the establishment of new vector species, such as specific mosquito and tick species, in Europe and other parts of the world. With these changes come new challenges for maintaining human and animal health. This paper reports on an analysis of the literature focused on a bibliometric analysis of the Scopus database and VOSviewer software for creating visualization maps which identifies the zoonotic health risks for humans and animals caused by climate change. The sources retained for the analysis totaled 428 and different thresholds (N) were established for each item varying from N 5 to 10. The main findings are as follows: First, published documents increased in 2009–2015 peaking in 2020. Second, the primary sources have cha...

Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 2020

Residents' overall well-being and quality-of-life require a deeper understanding of their perceived social impacts of tourism to determine appropriate management strategies to promote behaviours in support of tourism development. Aligning with the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development, this paper proposes a new framework for residents' quality-of-life. Bringing together multi-disciplinary evidence from environmental, social and cognitive psychology, political science and tourism, this study critically examines how residents' perceived social impacts of tourism and their interpersonal trust can make them become more place attached and protect their tourism resources. The framework proposes that residents' perceived social impacts of tourism exerts a direct influence on residents' interpersonal trust. It further posits that residents' perceived social impacts of tourism and their interpersonal trust exert a direct influence on residents' place attachment. The proposed model further considers place attachment to exert a direct influence on residents' pro-social and pro-environmental behavioural intentions. Prosocial behaviour is proposed to influence pro-environmental behaviour. Further pro-social and pro-environmental behaviours are proposed to influence residents' support for tourism development. The framework then considers residents' support for tourism development to exert a direct influence on residents' overall quality-of-life. The theoretical contributions, practical implications for sustainable community tourism and sustainable tourism in general and the limitations of the study are discussed.

Frontiers in Psychology, 2020

exploring the interplay of relationships between place confinement, pro-social behavior, household pro-environmental behaviors, place attachment as a multi-dimensional construct and presenting their relationships to residents' wellbeing. Behavioral change interventions are proposed to promote lifestyle change for people's wellbeing and broader societal benefits.

Frontiers in Nutrition, 2021

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2020

Indigenous peoples are resilient peoples with deep traditional knowledge and scientific thought spanning millennia. Global discourse on climate change however has identified Indigenous populations as being a highly vulnerable group due to the habitation in regions undergoing rapid change, and the disproportionate burden of morbidity and mortality already faced by this population. Therefore, the need for Indigenous self-determination and the formal recognition of Indigenous knowledges, including micro-level molecular and microbial knowledges, as a critical foundation for planetary health is in urgent need. Through the process of Indigenous decolonization, even at the smallest molecular scale, we define a method back to our original selves and therefore to our planetary origin story. Our health and well-being is directly reflected at the planetary scale, and we suggest, can be rooted through the concept of molecular decolonization, which through the English language emerged from the ‘...

Cadernos de Saúde Pública

A Norma Brasileira de Comercialização de Alimentos para Lactentes e Crianças de Primeira Infância, Bicos, Chupetas e Mamadeiras (NBCAL), vigente no Brasil desde 1988, ainda é sistematicamente infringida, expondo mães e familiares ao marketing ilegal de produtos que competem com o aleitamento materno. O objetivo foi descrever metodologia de estudo multicêntrico e propor indicadores padronizados para monitoramento da NBCAL. Estudo Multicêntrico para Monitoramento da NBCAL (Multi-NBCAL) conduzido em sete cidades brasileiras: Rio de Janeiro; São Paulo; Ouro Preto (Minas Gerais); Florianópolis (Santa Catarina); Brasília (Distrito Federal); João Pessoa (Paraíba) e Belém (Pará). Instrumentos de avaliação foram adaptados do NetCode/WHO e da IBFAN Brasil (Rede Internacional em Defesa do Direito de Amamentar) para condução de dois inquéritos: (1) avaliação do cumprimento da NBCAL em estabelecimentos comerciais e das práticas e conhecimento dos seus gerentes sobre a NBCAL; (2) avaliação em mat...

Health Systems & Reform, 2019

This paper presents the rationale and motivation for countries and the global development community to tackle a critical set of functions in the health sector that appear to be under-prioritized and underfunded. The recent eruptions of Ebola outbreaks in Africa and other communicable diseases like Zika and SARS elsewhere led scientific and medical commissions to call for global action. The calls for action motivated the World Health Organization (WHO) to respond by defining a new construct within the health sector: Common Good for Health (CGH). While the starting point for developing the CGH construct was the re-emergence of communicable diseases, it extends to additional outcomes resulting from failures to act and finance within and outside the health sector. This paper summarizes global evidence on failures to address CGHs effectively, identifies potential reasons for the public and private sectors' failures to respond, and lays out the first phase of the WHO program as represented by the papers in this special issue of Health Systems & Reform.

Sustainability, 2020

No one would dispute that agricultural systems and food diets are not sustainable from an environmental and health point of view, and that increasing their sustainability must be a major objective of farm and food policies. Simultaneously, climatic, environmental, and health shocks are likely to increase in the coming years. This note defends the idea of an additional double benefit of public policies, aiming at favoring environmentally friendly food systems and healthy diets through two channels: by reducing the risks of developing shocks and by limiting their negative impacts on populations when they occur. As a result, public policies should address, simultaneously and consistently, supply and demand issues. This is illustrated in the case of the European Union. Supply measures should favor the agro-ecological transition of agricultural systems through a more rigorous application of the polluter pays principle, implying notably the taxation of the main determinants of agricultura...

International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer, 2021

Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre-including this research content-immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.

BMJ Open, 2021

BackgroundPreventing infantile anaemia and ensuring optimal growth and development during early childhood, particularly in resource-constrained settings, represent an ongoing public health challenge. Current responses are aligned to treatment-based solutions, instead of determining the roles of its inter-related causes. This project aims to assess and understand the complex interplay of eco-bio-social-political factors that determine infantile anaemia to inform policy, research design and prevention practices.MethodsThis is a longitudinal birth cohort study including four components: (1) biological, will assess known blood markers of iron homeostasis and anaemia and stool microbiota to identify and genetically analyse the participants’ flora; (2) ecological, will assess and map pollutants in air, water and soil and evaluate features of nutrition and perceived food security; (3) social, which will use different qualitative research methodologies to explore key stakeholders and inform...

Landscape Ecology, 2019

connectivity and flows across spatially heterogeneous systems, and (3) a systems understanding of the linkages between disturbance, resilience, and recovery. Achieving an ecological civilization is within the scope of human capability, but it will require a fundamental shift in world view and cooperation amongst all actors in the human race. A key place to start is with landscapes. This editorial provides perspectives from landscape ecology and landscape sustainability science for achieving this goal.

Microorganisms, 2020

Microbes evolve in complex environments that are often fashioned, in part, by human desires. In a global perspective, public health has played major roles in structuring how microbes are perceived, cultivated, and destroyed. The germ theory of disease cast microbes as enemies of the body and the body politic. Antibiotics have altered microbial development by providing stringent natural selection on bacterial species, and this has led to the formation of antibiotic-resistant bacterial strains. Public health perspectives such as “Precision Public Health” and “One Health” have recently been proposed to further manage microbial populations. However, neither of these take into account the symbiotic relationships that exist between bacterial species and between bacteria, viruses, and their eukaryotic hosts. We propose a perspective on public health that recognizes microbial evolution through symbiotic associations (the hologenome theory) and through lateral gene transfer. This perspective...

World, 2021

Environmentalists have long warned of a coming shock to the system. COVID-19 exposed fragility in the system and has the potential to result in radical social change. With socioeconomic interruptions cascading through tightly intertwined economic, social, environmental, and political systems, many are not working to find the opportunities for change. Prefigurative politics in communities have demonstrated rapid and successful responses to the pandemic. These successes, and others throughout history, demonstrate that prefigurative politics are important for response to crisis. Given the failure of mainstream environmentalism, we use systemic transformation literature to suggest novel strategies to strengthen cooperative prefigurative politics. In this paper, we look at ways in which COVID-19 shock is leveraged in local and global economic contexts. We also explore how the pandemic has exposed paradoxes of global connectivity and interdependence. While responses shed light on potentia...

European Journal of Dental Education, 2021

Introduction: Evidence concerning the interactions between human health and planetary health has grown extensively in recent years. In turn, the perceived importance of environmental sustainability within higher education is growing at a rapid rate. This paper provides a summary of key elements as they apply to dentistry, and provides an introduction to the reader of an early consensus of how sustainability could be included as part of the dental curriculum. Methods: The consensus opinion within this paper largely centres around discussion at the ADEE sustainability workshop at the annual conference in Berlin (August 2019). In order to help inform discussions at the workshop, a brief scoping questionnaire was circulated to potential participants regarding their understanding and current teaching practices in sustainability. An infographic was designed to help delegates remember the important elements of sustainable dentistry. Delegates discussed the concept of sustainability alongside the infographic, and how they could link these with the Graduating European Dentist (GED) curriculum. Results: The discussions within the workshop largely centred around 4 main themes: Disease prevention and health promotion, Patient education and empowerment, Lean service delivery and Preferential use of strategies with lower environmental impact. Discussion: It is apparent that there is a widespread need for teaching materials relating to environmental sustainability; this includes specific learning outcomes relating to the 4 educational domains of the Graduating European Dentist curriculum, and methods for teaching and assessing these outcomes.

2022

Global health degree programs are now offered by institutions of higher education in most world regions. Based on our review of the curricula for many of these programs, we identified five domains that are central to current global health education. "Parity" emphasizes health equity as the ultimate goal of global health. "People" comprises the social, economic, cultural, and political contributors to health and access to medical care for individuals and communities. "Planet" encompasses various aspects of globalization and environmental health that affect population health. "Priorities" and "practices" include the values, data, and tools used to design, implement, and evaluate partnerships, policies, programs, and other global health interventions in countries of all income levels. The pandemic is likely to increase student demand for global health education from the undergraduate through the graduate and professional levels. Our "5 Ps model of global health education" provides a comprehensive framework for the core student learning objectives for global health today. Knowledge of each of these domains is essential for preparing students for meaningful experiential learning and skilled professional practice in global health.

Journal of Cleaner Production, 2021

We present 2.9-4.1 µm integral field spectroscopy of the L4+L4 brown dwarf binary HD 130948BC, obtained with the Arizona Lenslets for Exoplanet Spectroscopy (ALES) mode of the Large Binocular Telescope Interferometer (LBTI). The HD 130948 system is a hierarchical triple system, in which the G2V primary is joined by two co-orbiting brown dwarfs. By combining the age of the system with the dynamical masses and luminosities of the substellar companions, we can test evolutionary models of cool brown dwarfs and extra-solar giant planets. Previous near-infrared studies suggest a disagreement between HD 130948BC luminosities and those derived from evolutionary models. We obtained spatially-resolved, low-resolution (R∼20) L-band spectra of HD 130948B and C to extend the wavelength coverage into the thermal infrared. Jointly using JHK photometry and ALES Lband spectra for HD 130948BC, we derive atmospheric parameters that are consistent with parameters derived from evolutionary models. We leverage the consistency of these atmospheric quantities to favor a younger age (0.50 ± 0.07 Gyr) of the system compared to the older age (0.79 +0.22 −0.15 Gyr) determined with gyrochronology in order to address the luminosity discrepancy.

Environment, Development and Sustainability, 2020

There is an increasing demand to quantify the footprints, ecological, economic and social, in terms of the effect of different interventions in healthcare. The aim of this study was to compare two systems providing patients with diabetes with insoles in terms of their ecological, economic and social footprints. Prefabricated insoles (PRI) were compared with custom-made insoles (CMI). Using a welfare-economic monetary approach, costs were estimated for (1) treatment, (2) travelling to and from the hospital in terms of both fuel and time consumed by the patients and (3) society through emissions contributing to climate change. The proportion of patients/year that could be supplied within the same budget, for each individual treatment, was calculated. The cost of the insoles was 825 SEK (PRI) and 1450 SEK (CMI), respectively. The cost, mean value/patient due to the consumption of patients’ time at the department, was 754 SEK (PRI) and 1508 SEK (CMI), respectively. Emissions, in terms o...

Global Mental Health

Mental well-being in the Anthropocene Human health hinges on the integrity of the planetary biophysical environment and local ecosystems (Zywert and Quilley, 2020). Climate change, ocean acidification, freshwater supplies overconsumption, air pollution, stratospheric ozone depletion, and toxic waste have triggered extreme weather events, rising temperatures, biodiversity loss, food degradation, and new communicable diseases that have severely impacted on not only ecosystems (Phelan, 2020), but also the physical and mental health of children, the elderly, and other vulnerable populations with pre-existing chronic health conditions and low economic status (Ingle and Mikulewicz, 2020). Mental disorders associated with climate change are far less visible than physical ones, particularly in low-and middle-income countries, in which public mental healthcare tends not to be prioritized by international development agencies and national governments. Extraordinary heat events noticeably increase hospital admissions for behavioral and mood disorders such as mania, neurotic disorders, and schizophrenia (Hayes et al., 2018). Extreme weather events such as flooding, hurricanes, tsunamis, and wildfires can lead to acute shock, increased incidence of suicide and suicidal ideation, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD); gradual climate development like changes in temperature patterns, increased frequency of droughts, disappearance of rivers, and rising sea levels can alter the social determinants of mental health (Chan, 2020), and result in chronic psychological distress and anxiety in the long run (The Lancet Planetary Health, 2017). Widespread ecological degradation and abject governmental responses to food and water insecurity additionally contribute to the occurrence of armed conflict and civil unrest (Hayes et al., 2018), which are likely to result in adverse psychological effects in affected populations. Furthermore, the untenability of local environmental conditions may cause the permanent mass displacement of sizeable populations because of the disruption of communities and destruction of homes (Lemery and Auerbach, 2017), which, in turn, can bring forth significant psychosocial stress (Cianconi et al., 2020). The scarcity of clean water and other necessities of life due to pollution and climate change is regarded in many cultures as a source of shame and humiliation, which can turn family members and neighbors against each other (Wutich et al., 2016). Alarmingly, people experience pre-traumatic stress disorder and climate distress in anticipation of planetary and environmental changes as well (Clayton, 2020). Ecoanxiety, characterized by debilitating, severe worry about climate risks, can result in a dramatic loss of appetite, insomnia, obsessive thinking, and panic attacks (Gifford and Gifford, 2016), which may amalgamate with other daily stressors to trigger anxiety disorders, depression, and substance abuse (Horton and Lo, 2015). In addition, climate change can aggravate preexisting inequities faced by persons with mental disabilities (United Nations Human Rights Council, 2020). In response to the alarming impact climate change has had on human health, the field of planetary health has emerged in recent years, focusing on 'the achievement of the highest attainable standard of health, wellbeing, and equity worldwide through judicious attention to the human systems-political, economic, and social-that shape the future of humanity and the Earth's natural systems that define the safe environmental limits within which humanity can flourish' (Whitmee et al., 2015). This field has thus far focused primarily on physical health, however, and given that there can be no health without mental health (Prince et al., 2007), much more emphasis needs to be placed on the under-researched area of planetary mental health (Jevtic and Bouland, 2019). Importantly, it should be noted that the crisis of planetary mental health forms part of the global mental health crisis (Ip and Cheung, 2020), in which major depressive disorders have become the second leading cause of disability worldwide and affect population health to a greater extent than coronary artery disease and diabetes (Williams, 2019). The concept of planetary mental health law The conceptualization of planetary mental health should have as its starting point the clear recognition that climate change is a cause of a myriad of population-wide mental health

Public Health Research, 2018

Background England, and the UK more generally, has a large burden of winter- and cold-related mortality/morbidity in comparison with nearby countries in continental Europe. Improving the energy efficiency of the housing stock may help to reduce this, as well as being important for climate change and energy security objectives. Objectives To evaluate the impact of home energy efficiency (HEE) interventions on winter- and cold-related mortality/morbidity, including assessing the impact of winter fuel payments (WFPs) and fuel costs. Design A mixed-methods study – an epidemiological time-series analysis, an analysis of data on HEE interventions, the development and application of modelling methods including a multicriteria decision analysis and an in-depth interview study of householders. Setting England, UK. Participants The population of England. In-depth interviews were conducted with 12 households (2–4 participants each) and 41 individuals in three geographical regions. Intervention...

Challenges

Antimicrobials are compounds that impede the activities of bacteria, viruses, parasites, or fungi. Continuous antimicrobial overuse, misuse, and improper use for human, animal, and agricultural purposes are raising concerns about antibiotic residue pollution in the environment, and antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs). Because antimicrobial-resistant diseases are linked to human–-microbial ecosystems, environmental pollution from antibiotic residue and ARGs alters the makeup and diversity of human gut microbiota, putting resistance under selection pressure. This perspective proposes that antibiotic-induced microbiome depletion is linked to environmental quality and has repercussions for human health via the gut microbiome’s sensitive ecosystem. This has stimulated new global efforts and multidisciplinary, integrative approaches to addressing Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) awareness in communities. Several academic papers published in recent years have shown that medicinal plant extrac...

Cadernos de Saúde Pública, 2019

A abordagem do nexo urbano corresponde à compreensão e à busca de soluções integradas mediante o reconhecimento das interdependências entre água, energia e alimentos, recursos cuja escassez configura iniquidades em saúde. A hipótese central deste artigo considera que o contexto de escassez corrobora práticas sociais que podem ser sinérgicas ou contraditórias em relação aos desafios da sustentabilidade e dos direitos sociais. O objetivo é investigar sinergias e contradições a partir de práticas sociais mediante o nexo urbano no bairro Novo Recreio, na cidade de Guarulhos, Região Metropolitana de São Paulo, Brasil. A metodologia consiste em um estudo qualitativo e de base etnográfica com referência à Teoria das Práticas, com observações diretas de campo e narrativas. Os resultados apresentaram práticas sociais associadas a falta sistemática de água, precariedades na iluminação pública e no transporte, bem como dificuldade de acesso a alimentos frescos e saudáveis. O estudo das prática...

Global Health and Global Health Ethics (2nd edition), 2021

This chapter explores the ethical challenge posed by ecocide—the destruction of Earth’s life-sustaining systems—employing a variety of lenses that go beyond the traditional purview of western ethics. Using ecopsychology, the relationship between separative consciousness and exploitation is considered. The chapter proposes that addressing the ecological crisis will entail—not only technological, political, and economic changes—but also moving away from a worldview rooted in separative consciousness, instrumental thinking, hierarchy, exploitation, and a focus on competition. This transformation can also be understood in terms of changing our collective story towards a narrative that emphasises interconnection, cooperation, meaning, community, and the flourishing of life. Drawing on insights from Indigenous traditions (sumak kaysay/buen vivir and the good life/mino-bimaadiziwin) as well as global South perspectives (Bhutan’s gross domestic happiness and the Earth Charter), the nature of living well as a basis for health ethics is explored. Finally, key facets of pathways towards integral health are examined including decolonisation and re-indigenisation, reconnection and reinhabitation with the land (with insights from animistic and eco-phenomenological perspectives), and movements for regenerative sustainability (the permaculture and Transition movements).

2021

Background: Decarbonisation refers to the process by which countries, individuals or other entities aim to achieve zero fossil carbon emissions through reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, including procurement, energy and buildings, pharmaceuticals, transport, and waste which impacts public health. Preliminary findings on decarbonisation in healthcare systems suggest that further research is required. Aims: This research was undertaken to explore the opportunities and barriers of decarbonisation of public hospitals within the ‘climate health’ planetary health boundary in the Republic of Ireland. Methodology: A literature review was used in conjunction with semi-structured qualitative interviews to explore barriers and opportunities of decarbonisation of Irish healthcare sector. The purposive sampling for the qualitative interviews resulted in the selection of five key decision-makers within cross-sector fields including environmental, public health, management and transport...

Sustainability, 2020

The elaboration of City Development Strategies (CDS) helps cities to harness the potential of urbanization through strategic planning, and consequently to contribute to promoting development, balancing city growth, and empowering citizens. Continuous and sprawling development along with peri-urban areas has offered a vast and almost limitless nexus of villages–towns upon which the intensifying needs of development, initiatives, and infrastructures can be grafted. Considering the significant role of constructed nexuses in growth and resilience, and thus in planning for the sustainable development of such urban–rural areas, this study will advance the development of a model of the Urban–Rural Reef ecosystem through discovering its main attributes. In doing so, Aveiro has been distinguished as an urban–rural reef to describe such a case study’s characteristics and to extract the indicators of peri-urban sustainable development strategies. In the next step, the assessment of the peri-ur...

Global Health

A biological attack is the intentional release of a pathogen (disease causing agent) or biotoxin (poisonous substance produced by a living organism) against humans, plants, or animals. An attack against people could be used to cause illness, death, fear, societal disruption, and eco nomic damage. An attack on agricultural plants and animals would primarily cause economic damage, loss of confidence in the food supply, and possible loss of life. It is useful to distinguish between two kinds of biological agents: • Transmissible agents that spread from person to person (e.g., small pox, Ebola) or animal to animal (e.g., foot and mouth disease). • Agents that may cause adverse effects in exposed individuals but that do not make those individuals contagious to others (e.g., anthrax, bot ulinum toxin).

Global public health, 2018

In recent years, research on the military deployment of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), or drones, has proliferated. However, to date there has been little systematic study of how drones are being used for health surveillance and management, particularly in resource-constrained settings. In this paper, we draw on a number of case studies to explore how the biomedical drone is contributing to a re-spatialization of health and to a process of datafication that is set to fundamentally change the nature and scope of health governance. The promotion of the drone as a solution to global challenges reflects a broader techno-optimism. However, drones and the cybernetworks they rely on are short-circuiting terrestrial systems and driving a strategic, hotspot approach to health. This targeted view of the world, we argue, recapitulates and extends earlier forms of colonial surveillance and intervention premised on security and incipient threat. We develop the notion of 'anarchitecture&#39...

Dental Update, 2021

Oral healthcare has an environmental impact that is specific to the profession and is currently unsustainable. This impact results in unwanted and difficult-to-manage waste, carbon emissions and other environmental impacts that contribute to climate change. Contributions to this pollution come from the supply chain that provides the required materials and sundries, patient and staff commuting/travelling, direct patient care, the use and end-of-life management of restorative materials and single-use plastics (SUPs) such as personal protective equipment (PPE). This article explores these various contributors to pollution arising from oral healthcare. CPD/Clinical Relevance: The provision of oral healthcare has an environmental impact that requires consideration and action in order to become sustainable.

Environmental Health, 2022

Background Technological advancements make lives safer and more convenient. Unfortunately, many of these advances come with costs to susceptible individuals and public health, the environment, and other species and ecosystems. Synthetic chemicals in consumer products represent a quintessential example of the complexity of both the benefits and burdens of modern living. How we navigate this complexity is a matter of a society’s values and corresponding principles. Objectives We aimed to develop a series of ethical principles to guide decision-making within the landscape of environmental health, and then apply these principles to a specific environmental chemical, oxybenzone. Oxybenzone is a widely used ultraviolet (UV) filter added to personal care products and other consumer goods to prevent UV damage, but potentially poses harm to humans, wildlife, and ecosystems. It provides an excellent example of a chemical that is widely used for the alleged purpose of protecting human health a...

Canadian Journal of Public Health, 2021

The Anthropocene Review, 2019

The Anthropocene as a new planetary epoch has brought to the foreground the deep-time interconnections of human agency with the earth system. Yet despite this recognition of strong temporal interdependencies, we still lack understanding of how societal and political organizations can manage interconnections that span several centuries and dozens of generations. This study pioneers the analysis of what we call “deep-time organizations.” We provide detailed comparative historical analyses of some of the oldest existing organizations worldwide from a variety of sectors, from the world’s oldest bank (Sveriges Riksbank) to the world’s oldest university (University of Al Quaraouiyine) and the world’s oldest dynasty (Imperial House of Japan). Based on our analysis, we formulate 12 initial design principles that could lay, if supported by further empirical research along similar lines, the basis for the construction and design of “deep-time organizations” for long-term challenges of earth s...

Transcultural Psychiatry, 2020

In recent years, efforts in Global Mental Health (GMH) have evolved alongside critical engagement with the field's claims and interventions. GMH has shifted its agenda and epistemological underpinnings, increased its evidence base, and joined other global policy platforms such as the Sustainable Development Goals. This editorial introduction to a thematic issue traces the recent shifts in the GMH agenda and discusses the changing construct of “mental health” as GMH moves away from a categorical biomedical model toward dimensional and transdiagnostic approaches and embraces digital technologies. We highlight persistent and emerging lines of inquiry and advocate for meaningful interdisciplinary engagement. Taken together, the articles in this special issue of Transcultural Psychiatry provide a snapshot of current interdisciplinary work in GMH that considers the socio-cultural and historical dimensions of mental health important and proposes reflexive development of interventions a...

Current Obesity Reports, 2022

Purpose of Review The goal of this manuscript is to identify dietary and active transport strategies that reduce greenhouse gases and obesity, and thereby mitigate the effects of climate change on crop yields and micronutrient content. Recent Findings This report builds on our earlier publication that described the Global Syndemic of Obesity, Undernutrition, and Climate Change. We focus here on the contributions that the USA makes to the Global Syndemic and the policy solutions necessary to reduce the effects of the transport and food and agriculture systems on greenhouse gas emissions and environmental degradation. Summary A recent study suggests that people are interested and ready to address local solutions to climate change. Changing the individual behaviors that sustain the US transport and food and agriculture systems is the first step to the broader engagement necessary to build the political will that to achieve institutional, municipal, state, and federal policy.

Veterinary World

Background and Aim: Vector-borne diseases (VBDs) constitute a global problem for humans and animals. Knowledge related to the spatial distribution of various species of vectors and their relationship with the environment where they develop is essential to understand the current risk of VBDs and for planning surveillance and control strategies in the face of future threats. This study aimed to identify models, variables, and factors that may influence the emergence and resurgence of VBDs and how these factors can affect spatial local and global distribution patterns. Materials and Methods: A systematic review was designed based on identification, screening, selection, and inclusion described in the research protocols according to the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses guide. A literature search was performed in PubMed, ScienceDirect, Scopus, and SciELO using the following search strategy: Article type: Original research, Language: English, Publishing p...

Archives of Public Health, 2016

Background: The increase in solid waste generated per capita in Africa has not been accompanied by a commensurate growth in the capacity and funding to manage it. It is reported that less than 30% of urban waste in developing countries is collected and disposed appropriately. The implications of poorly managed waste on health are numerous and depend on the nature of the waste, individuals exposed, duration of exposure and availability of interventions for those exposed. Objective: To present a framework for understanding the linkages between poor solid waste management, exposure and associated adverse health outcomes. The framework will aid understanding of the relationships, interlinkages and identification of the potential points for intervention. Methods: Development of the framework was informed by a review of literature on solid waste management policies, practices and its impact on health in developing countries. A configurative synthesis of literature was applied to develop the framework. Several iterations of the framework were reviewed by experts in the field. Each linkage and outcomes are described in detail as outputs of this study. Result: The resulting framework identifies groups of people at a heightened risk of exposure and the potential health consequences. Using the iceberg metaphor, the framework illustrates the pathways and potential burden of ill-health related to solid waste that is hidden but rapidly unfolding with our inaction. The existing evidence on the linkage between poor solid waste management and adverse health outcomes calls to action by all stakeholders in understanding, prioritizing, and addressing the issue of solid waste in our midst to ensure that our environment and health are preserved. Conclusion: A resulting framework developed in this study presents a clearer picture of the linkages between poor solid waste management and could guide research, policy and action.

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2020

The land provides vital resources to support life on Earth. Land ecosystems services have social, cultural, and spiritual benefits and promote human health and well-being. However, human activities, particularly ongoing unsustainable land practices, are negatively impacting ecosystems through desertification, land degradation and drought (DLDD). This article highlights the pressures and impacts of DLDD on human health through exposure pathways, including water security and safety; sanitation and hygiene; food security and safety; air quality; and soil quality. We describe the impacts on 19 health outcomes in three groups: non-communicable diseases; injuries; and infections, parasitic and nutritional diseases. The magnitude of these health impacts is mediated by social, economic, and health system-related factors. We propose actions for the health sector to respond to the DLDD challenges.

Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, 2020

Clinical & Experimental Ophthalmology, 2019

This is the author manuscript accepted for publication and has undergone full peer review but has not been through the copyediting, typesetting, pagination and proofreading process, which may lead to differences between this version and the Version of Record. Please cite this article as

Wellcome Open Research

Background: Effective and rapid actions are required to achieve global goals for climate change mitigation, and there is an opportunity to ensure that the actions taken are also positive for human health. However, little is known about the relative magnitude of the health co-benefits that can be achieved from mitigation actions, so robust and comprehensive syntheses of the evidence on the nature and effects of relevant actions are required. This paper presents a protocol for an interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral umbrella review of systematic reviews, synthesising modelled and empirical evidence on such actions. Methods: Nine bibliographic databases will be searched, capturing literature across a wide range of disciplines and sectors. Unique records retrieved by the searches will be screened by two independent reviewers. The quality of all the included systematic reviews will be assessed using A MeaSurement Tool to Assess Systematic Reviews (AMSTAR) 2 critical appraisal tool. Data ...

Wellcome Open Research

Background: Effective and rapid actions are required to achieve global goals for climate change mitigation, and there is an opportunity to ensure that the actions taken are also positive for human health. However, little is known about the relative magnitude of the health co-benefits that can be achieved from mitigation actions, so robust and comprehensive syntheses of the evidence on the nature and effects of relevant actions are required. This paper presents a protocol for an interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral umbrella review of systematic reviews, synthesising modelled and empirical evidence on such actions. Methods: Nine bibliographic databases will be searched, capturing literature across a wide range of disciplines and sectors. Unique records retrieved by the searches will be screened by two independent reviewers. The quality of all the included systematic reviews will be assessed using A MeaSurement Tool to Assess Systematic Reviews (AMSTAR) 2 critical appraisal tool. Data ...

Frontiers in Public Health

Humans live in complex socio-ecological systems where we interact with parasites and pathogens that spend time in abiotic and biotic environmental reservoirs (e.g., water, air, soil, other vertebrate hosts, vectors, intermediate hosts). Through a synthesis of published literature, we reviewed the life cycles and environmental persistence of 150 parasites and pathogens tracked by the World Health Organization's Global Burden of Disease study. We used those data to derive the time spent in each component of a pathogen's life cycle, including total time spent in humans versus all environmental stages. We found that nearly all infectious organisms were “environmentally mediated” to some degree, meaning that they spend time in reservoirs and can be transmitted from those reservoirs to human hosts. Correspondingly, many infectious diseases were primarily controlled through environmental interventions (e.g., vector control, water sanitation), whereas few (14%) were primarily contro...

Biosensors, 2018

In foods, high levels of biogenic amines (BA) are the result of microbial metabolism that could be affected by temperatures and storage conditions. Thus, the level of BA is commonly used as an indicator of food safety and quality. This manuscript outlines the development of laser scribed graphene electrodes, with locally sourced materials, for reagent-free food safety biosensing. To fabricate the biosensors, the graphene surface was functionalized with copper microparticles and diamine oxidase, purchased from a local supermarket; and then compared to biosensors fabricated with analytical grade materials. The amperometric biosensor exhibits good electrochemical performance, with an average histamine sensitivity of 23.3 µA/mM, a lower detection limit of 11.6 µM, and a response time of 7.3 s, showing similar performance to biosensors constructed from analytical grade materials. We demonstrated the application of the biosensor by testing total BA concentration in fish paste ...

Frontiers in Public Health

In hindsight, the early response of liberal governments to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic was chaotic and generally inefficient. Though one might be tempted to attribute these failures to the incompetence of certain political decision-makers, we propose another explanation. Global threats require a coordinated international response, which is only possible if the threat is perceived in the same way by all, and if government priorities are similar. The effectiveness of the response also relies on massive adhesion of citizens to the measures imposed, which in turn requires trust in government. Our hypothesis is that certain fundamental features of liberalism complicate such global and collective responses: neutrality of the state and primacy of the individual over collective society. Liberalism considers that institutions and public policy must not be designed to favor any specific conception of the common good. That which is best for all is usually determined by a “competition of opinions,”...

Land degradation and climate change are intertwined global challenges, their implications on human health is driven by unsustainable use of natural resources which results to loss of vital ecosystem services. Although exploitation of natural resources has benefited human-wellbeing, it has also resulted to catastrophic degradation of landscapes, acutely affecting populations living in the most fragile ecosystems. Landscape restoration is widely advocated to reverse degradation, however, implementation has outpaced research on impact, particularly with regards to human-health outcomes. This study documents perspectives of rural communities living in dryland and demonstrates a novel application of ecosystem services framework to conceptualise the pathways to health. The analysis of group discussions show how Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR) can reverse decades of land degradation with cascading benefits on climate change resilience and multiple health outcomes linked to heat ...

The Lancet Planetary Health

In this Personal View, we explain the ways that climatic risks affect the transmission, perception, response, and lived experience of COVID-19. First, temperature, wind, and humidity influence the transmission of COVID-19 in ways not fully understood, although non-climatic factors appear more important than climatic factors in explaining disease transmission. Second, climatic extremes coinciding with COVID-19 have affected disease exposure, increased susceptibility of people to COVID-19, compromised emergency responses, and reduced health system resilience to multiple stresses. Third, long-term climate change and prepandemic vulnerabilities have increased COVID-19 risk for some populations (eg, marginalised communities). The ways climate and COVID-19 interact vary considerably between and within populations and regions, and are affected by dynamic and complex interactions with underlying socioeconomic, political, demographic, and cultural conditions. These conditions can lead to vulnerability, resilience, transformation, or collapse of health systems, communities, and livelihoods throughout varying timescales. It is important that COVID-19 response and recovery measures consider climatic risks, particularly in locations that are susceptible to climate extremes, through integrated planning that includes public health, disaster preparedness, emergency management, sustainable development, and humanitarian response.

Global Policy, 2019

Global health governance is in many ways proving more innovative and resilient than other sectors in global governance. In order to understand the mechanisms that have made these developments possible, this article draws on the concept of gridlock, as well as on the additional theoretical strands of metagovernance and adaptive governance, to conceptualize how global health governance has been able to adapt despite increasingly difficult conditions in the multilateral order. The remarkable degree of innovation that characterizes global health governance is the result of two interrelated conditions. First, developments that are normally associated with gridlock in multilateral cooperation, such as institutional fragmentation and growing multipolarity, have transformed, rather than gridlocked, global health governance. Second, global health actors have often been able to harness the opportunities offered by three important pathways of change, namely: (1) a significant degree of organizational learning and active feedback loops between epistemic and practice communities; (2) a highly polycentric system of governance; and (3) the increased role of political leadership as a catalyst for governance innovation. These trends are discussed in the context of three case studies of significant political, social and health relevance, namely HIV/AIDS, the 2014 Ebola outbreak and antimicrobial resistance. Policy Implications • The WHO should not seek to separate its normative and technical function from its convening and leadership function in order to reassert its authority as the core institution of global health governance. • The use of effective interorganizational coordination mechanisms need to be expanded, with emphasis on areas such as environmental health and non-communicable diseases, or strengthened when already in place (such as in AMR), given that most current and emerging health challenges now require action beyond the health sector. • Raising the political profile of health challenges requires the consideration of the conditions under which doing so might foster significant progress. It is necessary to form inclusive alliances which coalesce around common goals and norms and bring together different types of actors. • The funding strategies of actors including multilateral development banks and private foundations must increasingly shift from vertical disease programmes to health system strengthening objectives, including universal health coverage and greater attention to the determinants of health. • International efforts aimed at generating buy-in by developing country actors on global health initiatives will have to be complemented by a stronger emphasis on using political leadership to create ownership at the domestic level, filling the persistent implementation and capacity gap that many countries still face. The complex interdependence and interconnected crises that characterize the current stage of globalization are often perceived to have outgrown the capacity of the international community to further engage in multilateral cooperation to supply global public goods including financial stability, climate change mitigation, security and the

Environmental Microbiome

The overarching biological impact of microbiomes on their hosts, and more generally their environment, reflects the co-evolution of a mutualistic symbiosis, generating fitness for both. Knowledge of microbiomes, their systemic role, interactions, and impact grows exponentially. When a research field of importance for planetary health evolves so rapidly, it is essential to consider it from an ethical holistic perspective. However, to date, the topic of microbiome ethics has received relatively little attention considering its importance. Here, ethical analysis of microbiome research, innovation, use, and potential impact is structured around the four cornerstone principles of ethics: Do Good; Don’t Harm; Respect; Act Justly. This simple, but not simplistic approach allows ethical issues to be communicative and operational. The essence of the paper is captured in a set of eleven microbiome ethics recommendations, e.g., proposing gut microbiome status as common global heritage, similar...

Evaluation, 2020

We are currently being challenged to urgently address the environmental crisis. Intervening in this complex ecology creates the need to adopt approaches that will reconcile natural and human systems, approaches for Planetary Health. In this article, we present a Planetary Health Framework as a conceptual dialogic approach for designing and evaluating interventions. Natural and human systems dimensions have been conceptualized in an integrated way, based on existing scientific knowledge. This framework is intended to be applied using a dialogic approach. We will also show, schematically, how the use of this approach can be overlaid on each of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. The overall aim of this article is to contribute to a transformation in our field, to expand our role from existing narrowly focused evaluation practices to taking into account in our work, how interventions do or do not make a contribution to building a better future for all.

BMJ

Frontiers in Public Health

Climate change is an anthropogenic phenomenon that is alarming scientists and non-scientists alike. The emission of greenhouse gases is causing the temperature of the earth to rise and this increase is accompanied by a multitude of climate change-induced environmental exposures with potential health impacts. Tracking human exposure has been a major research interest of scientists worldwide. This has led to the development of exposome studies that examine internal and external individual exposures over their lifetime and correlate them to health. The monitoring of health has also benefited from significant technological advances in the field of “omics” technologies that analyze physiological changes on the nucleic acid, protein, and metabolism levels, among others. In this review, we discuss various climate change-induced environmental exposures and their potential health implications. We also highlight the potential integration of the technological advancements in the fields of expo...

Climate and Development, 2019

Under conditions of protracted reduction in supply and heightened uncertainty, one of the notable responses to the Cape Town drought (2016-2018), was the proliferation of 'water resilience' in public and private discourses. Resilience was employed as an explanatory concept and governing tool, signalling a professed transition in the municipality's understandings to an altered climate episteme-or what they have called, a 'New Normal'. This article focuses on how public framings of resilience were used by the City of Cape Town to signal divorce from conventional approaches to climate and water. It contrasts conventional framings of a Holocene world, with those of a posited 'mentality of the Anthropocene' in order to elaborate this ostensible shift in mentality. Although this case study illustrates how public governors are finding utility in resilience as a term to facilitate explanation of their operating context, decisions and responses, contested and transitional mentalities elaborate why the municipality initially failed to anticipate, perceive and respond the drought. This article thereby highlights the cognitive tensions and practical challenges of transition for professionals patterned by conventional techno-managerial approaches, to a way of thinking more in line with reflexive and adaptive approaches anticipated to be necessary in an Anthropocene world.

International Journal of Urban Sustainable Development, 2019

At a time when flows of both water and finances were severely curtailed, this article explores the public and private adaptation actions which played out during Cape Town's drought which produced a 'shock within a shock' on the municipality's budget (2016-2018), this article provides a detailed and embedded account of the severity, urgency and complexity of the challenges that decision makers are faced with during such unanticipated events. Shifts in approaches are identified and traced through budget allocations to display uncharted governance arrangements which, although stabilising, present novel finance and governance challenges amidst altered resource and operating conditions. Reflecting on observed shifts and shock to the municipal budget, the article highlights the challenge of an uncoordinated response between public and private actors that aim to secure highreliability service delivery. Reflecting on the findings, recommendations outline resilience qualities necessary to municipal budgets through sketching contextually reflective questions for municipal financing models.

Complexity

Scientific modelling is a prime means to generate understanding and provide much-needed information to support public decision-making in the fluid area of sustainability. A growing, diverse sustainability modelling literature, however, does not readily lend itself to standard validation procedures, which are typically rooted in the positivist principles of empirical verification and predictive success. Yet, to be useful to decision-makers, models, including their outputs and the processes through which they are established must be, and must be seen to be “valid.” This study explores what model validity means in a problem space with increasingly interlinked and fast-moving challenges. We examine validation perspectives through ontological, epistemic, and methodological lenses, for a range of modelling approaches that can be considered as “complexity-compatible.” The worldview taken in complexity-compatible modelling departs from the more standard modelling assumptions of complete obj...

The Journal of Environment & Development, 2018

This article discusses the results of a pilot research strategy for monitoring environmental hazards derived from the use of mercury in artisanal gold mining in the Alto Cauca region, Colombia. During 2016 and 2017, a transdisciplinary approach was established to inquire on the health, environment, and territorial problems originated from artisanal mining. In this article, we specifically focus on how this particular issue affects women in the area. We establish a closed-loop approach for integrating social action research with analytical sciences/engineering to understand risks associated with Hg2+ levels in artisanal and small-scale gold mining in the Cauca department. We develop a platform known as closed-loop integration of social action and analytical chemistry research.

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2019

Identification and profiling of current and emerging disaster risks is essential to inform effective disaster risk management practice. Without clear evidence, readiness to accept future threats is low, resulting in decreased ability to detect and anticipate these new threats. A consequential decreased strategic planning for mitigation, adaptation or response results in a lowered resilience capacity. This study aimed to investigate threats to the health and well-being of societies associated with disaster impact in Oceania. The study used a mixed methods approach to profile current and emerging disaster risks in selected countries of Oceania, including small and larger islands. Quantitative analysis of the International Disaster Database (EM-DAT) provided historical background on disaster impact in Oceania from 2000 to 2018. The profile of recorded events was analyzed to describe the current burden of disasters in the Oceania region. A total of 30 key informant interviews with pract...

PLANNING MALAYSIA

This paper represents a bibliometric analysis of the Scopus database publications on resilience and urban planning. The study recalled 1,923 documents from 1997 to 2021 using keywords related to the research topic and analyzed this using Microsoft Excel 2019, VOSviewer and Harzing's Publish or Perish software. The findings show that the expansion rate of works in resilience and urban planning has steadily increased every year since 1997. This study's most frequently used terms are the main keywords, which are climate change, sustainability, urban resilience and spatial planning. Landscape and Urban Planning is recommended as the main target journal for publication of the results of this research analysis. Research on COVID-19 or pandemic resilience, public space and urban mobility may eventually supersede prior dominant themes. The findings suggest that researchers from less contributed countries should explore this topic more to provide nuance to this field.

The Lancet Planetary Health, 2021

Background Multiple bacteria, viruses, protists, and helminths cause enteric infections that greatly impact human health and wellbeing. These enteropathogens are transmited via several pathways through human, animal, and environmental reservoirs. Individual qPCR assays have been extensively used to detect enteropathogens within these types of samples, whereas the TaqMan array card (TAC), which allows simultaneous detection of multiple enteropathogens, has only previously been validated in human clinical samples. Methods In this methodological comparison study, we compared the performance of a custom 48-singleplex TAC relative to standard qPCR. We established the sensitivity and specificity of each method for the detection of eight enteric targets, by using spiked samples with varying levels of PCR inhibition. We then tested the prevalence and abundance of pathogens in wastewater from Melbourne (Australia), and human, animal, and environmental samples from informal settlements in Suva, Fiji using both TAC and qPCR. Findings Both methods exhibited similarly h specificity (TAC 100%, qPCR 94%), sensitivity (TAC 92%, qPCR 100%), and quantitation accuracy (TAC 91%, qPCR 99%) in non-inhibited sample matrices with spiked gene fragments. PCR inhibitors substantially affected detection via TAC, though this issue was alleviated by tenfold sample dilution. Among samples from informal settlements, the two techniques performed similarly for detection (89% agreement) and quantitation (R² 0•82) for the eight enteropathogen targets. The TAC additionally included 38 other enteric targets, enabling detection of diverse faecal pathogens and extensive environmental contamination that would be prohibitively labour intensive to assay by standard qPCR. Interpretation The two techniques produced similar results across diverse sample types, with qPCR prioritising greater sensitivity and quantitation accuracy, and TAC trading small reductions in these for a cost-effective larger enteropathogen panel enabling a greater number of enteric pathogens to be analysed concurrently, which is beneficial given the abundance and variety of enteric pathogens in environments such as urban informal settlements. The ability to monitor multiple enteric pathogens across diverse reservoirs could allow better resolution of pathogen exposure pathways, and the design and monitoring of interventions to reduce pathogen load.

Land, 2022

This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY

Frontiers in Public Health

In addition to the importance of fostering and developing measures for better health-system resilience globally from the effects of climate change, there have been increasing calls for health professionals, as well as public health and medical education systems, to become partners in climate change mitigation efforts. Direct clinical practice considerations, however, have not been adequately fostered equitably across all regions with an often-confusing array of practice areas within planetary health and sustainable healthcare. This article calls for a more coordinated effort within clinical practice spaces given the urgency of global environmental change, while also taking lessons from Indigenous traditional knowledge systems—a viewpoint that is rarely heard from or prioritized in public health or medicine. Simpler and more coordinated messaging in efforts to improve patient and planetary health are needed. The creation of unifying terminology within planetary health-rooted clinical...

Frontiers in Public Health

Planetary Health connects human health with the natural and anthropogenic systems on which it depends. Planetary Health education has been growing in a wide range of health-related disciplines, yet not been widely implemented in health-related university curricula. This cross-sectional study focused on students' knowledge of and interest in Planetary Health education in order to assess the relevance of Planetary Health and Planetary Health topics for university students and their fields of study. We surveyed 1,303 students enrolled in health-related programmes in Bavaria, Germany. Data was collected on students' previous knowledge of and interest in Planetary Health, as well as the relevance of different Planetary Health topics and students' willingness to select a Planetary Health elective within their study programmes. Descriptive statistics were calculated. The majority of participants (73.8%) had not yet heard of Planetary Health but were interested in learning more ...

Food Quality and Preference, 2021

This is a PDF file of an article that has undergone enhancements after acceptance, such as the addition of a cover page and metadata, and formatting for readability, but it is not yet the definitive version of record. This version will undergo additional copyediting, typesetting and review before it is published in its final form, but we are providing this version to give early visibility of the article. Please note that, during the production process, errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain.

Frontiers in Public Health

Planetary Health has emerged as a new approach to respond to the existential risks that the clime and global environmental crises pose to human societies. As stated by various stakeholders, the challenges involved in Planetary Health are of such magnitude that education must be at the forefront to obtain a meaningful response. Universities and higher education institutions have been specifically called to embed the concept of planetary stewardship in all curricula and train the next generation of researchers and change makers as a matter of urgency. As a response to this call, the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF), and the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal) developed the first online and asynchronous Master in Science (MSc) in Planetary Health. The aim of the programme is to train a new generation of academics and professionals who understand the challenges of Planetary Health and have tools to tackle them. This article describes...

Wellcome Open Research

Background Integrated metrics that account for resource use and human health are essential to help identify and support human development pathways that safeguard planetary health. We identify countries that achieved the highest levels of health and development at the lowest cost to Earth’s natural capital and report ecological within-country analyses of associations between indicators of environmental sustainability, human health, and development. Methods We used mixed-effects multiple linear regression models of Healthy Life Expectancy (HALE) and Human Capital (HC) related to Ecological Footprint (EF) and CO2 production emissions, controlling for Gini coefficient and population density applied to data of 216 countries from 1991-2016. We performed stratified analyses by country income level and used likelihood-ratio tests to test for interaction. Results Only Jamaica (1991) and Sri Lanka (2016) achieved high HALE at sustainable EF levels. Each 10% increase in EF was associated with ...

Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, 2023

Since the field of One Health was introduced in the early 2000s, veterinary medicine has provided leadership in working with other disciplines and sectors to identify effective, sustainable solutions to complex health problems that are shared by humans, animals, and the environment. Human-induced climate change has accelerated since the Industrial Age, resulting in serious adverse human, animal, and environmental health consequences. We summarize several drivers of climate change and ecosystem degradation connected to veterinary medicine. Building on previous studies and observations of others, we propose a set of urgent and actionable recommendations for individual veterinarians and the veterinary profession to mitigate and adapt to the health risks posed by climate change and ecosystem degradation at community, local, state, national, and international levels. In addition, we call for emphasizing the foundational relationship between climate change and ecosystem health to human, a...

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2017

Reducing the burden of neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) is one of the key strategic targets advanced by the Sustainable Development Goals. Despite the unprecedented effort deployed for NTD elimination in the past decade, their control, mainly through drug administration, remains particularly challenging: persistent poverty and repeated exposure to pathogens embedded in the environment limit the efficacy of strategies focused exclusively on human treatment or medical care. Here, we present a simple modelling framework to illustrate the relative role of ecological and socio-economic drivers of environmentally transmitted parasites and pathogens. Through the analysis of system dynamics, we show that periodic drug treatments that lead to the elimination of directly transmitted diseases may fail to do so in the case of human pathogens with an environmental reservoir. Control of environmentally transmitted diseases can be more effective when human treatment is complemented with interven...

Environmental science and pollution research international, 2017

Fine aerosol fraction (particulate matter with aerodynamic diameter <= 1.0 μm (PM)1.0) over the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi campus was monitored day and night (10 h each) at 30 m height from November 2009 to March 2010. The samples were analyzed for 5 ions (NH4(+), NO3(-), SO4(2-), F(-), and Cl(-)) and 12 trace elements (Na, K, Mg, Ca, Pb, Zn, Fe, Mn, Cu, Cd, Cr, and Ni). Importantly, secondary aerosol (sulfate and nitrate) formation was observed during dense foggy events, supporting the fog-smog-fog cycle. A total of 76 samples were used for source apportionment of PM mass. Six factors were resolved by PMF analyses and were identified as secondary aerosol, secondary chloride, biomass burning, soil dust, iron-rich source, and vehicular emission. The geographical location of the sources and/or preferred transport pathways was identified by conditional probability function (for local sources) and potential source contribution function (for regional sources) analyses. Mediu...

The Lancet Planetary Health, 2021

COVID-19 is disrupting and transforming the world. We argue that transformations catalysed by this pandemic should be used to improve human and planetary health and wellbeing. This paradigm shift requires decision makers and policy makers to go beyond building back better, by nesting the economic domain of sustainable development within social and environmental domains. Drawing on the engage, assess, align, accelerate, and account (E4As) approach to implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, we explore the implications of this kind of radical transformative change, focusing particularly on the role of the health sector. We conclude that a recovery and transition from the COVID-19 pandemic that delivers the future humanity wants and needs requires more than a technical understanding of the transformation at hand. It also requires commitment and courage from leaders and policy makers to challenge dominant constructs and to work towards a truly thriving, equitable, and sustainable future to create a world where economic development is not an end goal itself, but a means to secure the health and wellbeing of people and the planet.

Frontiers in Public Health, 2020

Background: Planetary health is an emerging holistic health field to foster interdisciplinary collaborations, integrate Indigenous knowledge, facilitate education, and drive public and policy engagement. To understand to what extent the field has successfully met these goals, we conducted a scoping review and bibliometric analysis. Methods: We searched 15 databases from 2005 to 2019 for peer-reviewed publications with the term "planetary health" in the title, abstract and/or keywords, with no language or geographical location limitations. We classified results into four categories (commentaries, comprehensive syntheses, educational material, and original research) and categorized original research according to expert-derived planetary health themes. Our bibliometric analysis highlighted publications over time, collaborations, and networks of keywords. Findings: Only 8.1% (n = 22) were research articles. Publications rose rapidly from 8 to 64 publications per year in 2015-2018. The top five author affiliation countries for most publications were the US, UK, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, and the top five collaborations were a subset of pairwise combinations between the US, UK, Australia, and Canada. The most common author keywords were the following: planetary health, climate change, ecology, and non-communicable diseases. Keyword co-occurrences clustered around high-level concepts (e.g., Anthropocene) and food system-related topics; two clusters lacked a theme. Interpretation: We show that the term planetary health is used mainly in commentary-like publications, not original research. Additionally, more global collaborations are lacking. Interdisciplinary work, as represented by keyword co-occurrence networks, is developing but could potentially be extended. The planetary health community should promote more worldwide research and interdisciplinary collaborations.

The Lancet Planetary Health

The planetary crises require health professionals to understand the interlinkages between health and environmental changes, and how to reduce ecological harm (ie, ecological footprint) and promote positive change (ie, ecological handprint). However, health professions' education and training are mostly lacking these aspects. In this Viewpoint, we report findings from the evaluation of the Planetary Health Academy, the first open online lecture series for transformative planetary health education in Germany. In a retrospective online survey, 458 of 3656 Planetary Health Academy participants reported on their emotions towards climate change, attitudes towards health professionals' responsibilities, self-efficacy, and the contribution of the Planetary Health Academy to their knowledge and actions. Additionally, motivators and barriers to acting were assessed. Our findings provide insights that can inform future efforts for transformative education. Combined with network and movement building, education could act as a social tipping element toward actions to mitigate global environmental changes.

Frontiers in Public Health

Education for planetary health could be one of the key levers of the much-needed civilizational turn toward a sustainable and healthy future. Education goes beyond information provision and passing on of knowledge and includes competencies to transfer knowledge from one decision situation to another. There are a range of different literacy concepts from various research perspectives that aim to improve such competencies. While many contain aspects highly relevant for planetary health, there is still no comprehensive and integrative planetary health approach. To fill this research gap, we present a conceptual model of planetary health literacy. By zooming into the model, further details on the necessary core competencies of accessing, understanding, appraising, and applying information in order to make judgements and take decisions regarding planetary health can be found. Zooming out of the model allows a holistic planetary health perspective and shows the potential and opportunities...

Public Health Reviews, 2016

Drawing on the report of the Rockefeller Foundation-Lancet Commission on planetary health-Safeguarding human health in the Anthropocene epoch, this piece presents a discussion of the implications of the report's findings and conclusions for Africa. It explores the key planetary health challenges facing Africa and what Africa can do to address them. In addition to highlighting current and future trajectories of key environmental changes in Africa and their implications for health and well-being, this transcript from the 21st Conference of Parties (COP21) side event, "Healthy Lives on a Healthy Planet", identifies a set of priority action Africa needs to take in order to deal with these challenges. It ends with reflections and key recommendations from participants at the regional launch of the report in Nairobi, Kenya, in October 2015.

Advances in Global Health

One Earth, 2021

Highlights d Safe climatic space method to assess climatic niche for global food production d Climate change risks pushing 1/3 of food production outside safe climatic space d Following the Paris Agreement would reduce this risk considerably d We call for interlinked climate change mitigation and adaptation actions

International Journal of Health Governance, 2016

Purpose In considering the present and future state of the world’s health, it is worth revisiting the Alma-Ata declaration of 1978 (International Conference on Primary health Care, 1978). This international declaration, signed almost 40 years ago confirmed the World Health Organisation (WHO) definition of health from the 1946 WHO Constitution as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity” (Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, 2015). The declaration clearly stated that health is a universal human right and that the gross inequalities in health apparent at the time of the conference, between and within countries, were unacceptable. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach This provides a review of the key articles in the current issue of IJHG with added evidence and commentary. Findings A global approach to health which acknowledges climate change, respects Aboriginal population...

Climate and Development, 2020

Global Policy, 2019

In September 2015, Member States of the United Nations (UN) committed to work towards a transformative policy agenda consisting of 17 ambitious Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be achieved by 2030. However, implementation progress has been slow and at the current rate the SDG agenda will fall far short on delivery of its 169 targets. In order to accelerate progress at global, national and local levels it is necessary to prioritize goals and targets. One standalone SDG that is also cross-cutting and universal is Goal 5: Gender equality and empowerment of all women and girls. In this article we assemble evidence to make the case that decisively (and politically) placing the gender equality goal (SDG5 and its 9 targets) together with 54 gender indicators across all goals as the priority focus of the 2030 agenda is the most impactful way to ensure measurable achievements are made across the agenda to deliver on all 5 pillars of the global commitment: namely People, Planet, Peace, Prosperity and Partnerships.

Ciência & Saúde Coletiva, 2023

O presente artigo tem dois objetivos integrados: (i) identificar a representação da saúde na Agenda 2030, a partir dos indicadores relacionados à saúde operacionalizados por instituições internacionais e nacionais; e (ii) comparar as potencialidades das plataformas para o monitoramento dos compromissos de saúde brasileiros nos ODS. Argumenta-se que ainda existem controvérsias importantes trazidas pela maior complexidade da Agenda 2030, em particular na operacionalização dos indicadores relacionados à saúde, cujos determinantes perpassam muitos outros objetivos e metas. O monitoramento e avaliação mais efetivos dos compromissos brasileiros nos ODS requer melhoria, com maior desagregação e estratificação dos indicadores na população, ainda que o retrato do país hoje disponibilizado nas diversas plataformas nacionais e internacionais já seja amplo.

Environmental Research, 2021

Nature Planetary health Urbanization for action to support Planetary Health during the 2020s. The Helsinki Declaration emphasizes the urgency to act as scientific evidence shows that human activities are causing climate change, biodiversity loss, land degradation, overuse of natural resources and pollution. They threaten the health and safety of human kind. Global, regional, national, local and individual initiatives are called for and multidisciplinary and multisectorial actions and measures are needed. A framework for an action plan is suggested that can be modified for local needs. Accordingly, a shift from fragmented approaches to policy and practice towards systematic actions will promote human health and health of the planet. Systems thinking will feed into conserving nature and biodiversity, and into halting climate change. The Planetary Health paradigmthe health of human civilization and the state of natural systems on which it dependsmust become the driver for all policies.

The Lancet Planetary Health

Global food systems are developing rapidly, and have resulted in a large burden of disease and a high proportion of environmental resource use. We combined global data sources on food supply and trade, environmental footprints, burdens of disease, and vulnerability to climate change to explore patterns from 1990 to 2017. Four distinct patterns of food supply (animal sources and sugar, vegetables and nuts, starchy roots and fruits, and seafood and oils) were matched to health and environmental risks. The animal sources and sugar pattern was found to have the greatest environmental footprint and to be associated with a greater burden of chronic disease than any other pattern, although it was also associated with lower undernutrition. This pattern is globally predominant, but has begun to decrease in higher income countries. Countries where this pattern is predominant are generally among the least susceptible to climate change, whereas more susceptible countries tend to have more sustainable patterns of food supply. More countries that are susceptible to climate change are increasingly exporting a larger proportion than before of their cereals, fruit, and vegetables globally, which will lead to increased risks in global food security. To increase resilience to future shocks, dietary change towards more sustainable patterns should accelerate in high-income countries, and the food systems of the most susceptible countries should be protected.

Sustainability

The reason for our research is to seek a valid solution, intended for urban development, among those already materialized or in the form of a concept, which corresponds to the pressing needs of the present and of a future dictated by the realities of such a present. We are aware of societal dictating forces as well as of the validity of certain solutions that, if applied on a large scale, could at least partially remedy the deficient functioning of a society adapting to the economic crisis, the crisis of natural resources, and the political and demographic crises, as it attempts to adjust. In the field of urban development, within such a context, as old as it is new, the solution was offered to us in the form of a concept aiming at restructuring and compartmentalizing interior space, with applicability in both the private and public sector. This concept, simple and predictable, has as its goal the reduction of interior space while significantly increasing its functionality through t...

Topics in Catalysis

We analyzed the enormous scale of global human needs, their carbon footprint, and how they are connected to energy availability. We established that most challenges related to resource security and sustainability can be solved by providing distributed, affordable, and clean energy. Catalyzed chemical transformations powered by renewable electricity are emerging successor technologies that have the potential to replace fossil fuels without sacrificing the wellbeing of humans. We highlighted the technical, economic, and societal advantages and drawbacks of short- to medium-term decarbonization solutions to gauge their practicability, economic feasibility, and likelihood for widespread acceptance on a global scale. We detailed catalysis solutions that enhance sustainability, along with strategies for catalyst and process development, frontiers, challenges, and limitations, and emphasized the need for planetary stewardship. Electrocatalytic processes enable the production of solar fuels...

Journal of Open Innovation: Technology, Market, and Complexity, 2020

Despite revolutionizing the work of practicing economists by providing a direct link between neo-classical economic theory and revealed market preference data, Random Utility Theory has yet to guide research applications in global market sustainability. With the worldwide adverse socio-economic effects of the 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19), such application now becomes timely. Therefore, relying on a Random Utility theoretic formulation of youths’ preferences for the biosphere (ecosystem services, sustainability) and science-based disease prevention to characterize their planetary health interests, this paper adopts a micro-based planetary view of markets to retrospectively analyze the health and ecological implications of digital media consumption among youths in the global economy. Empirically, we rely on a mixed bivariate ordered probit specification, which is estimated using Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods. Our findings reveal a strong, positive correlation coefficient (0....

Journal of Nursing Scholarship, 2017

Purpose: The adverse health effects from climate change demand action from the nursing profession. This article examines the calls to action, the status of climate change in nursing education, and challenges and recommendations for nursing education related to climate change and human health. Organizing Construct: Discussion paper. Findings: The integration of climate change into nursing education is essential so that knowledge, skills, and insights critical for clinical practice in our climate-changing world are incorporated in curricula, practice, research, and policy. Our Ecological Planetary Health Model offers a framework for nursing to integrate relevant climate change education into nursing curricula and professional nursing education. Nursing education can offer a leadership role to address the mitigation, adaptation, and resilience strategies for climate change. Conclusions: An ecological framework is valuable for nursing education regarding climate change through its consideration of political, cultural, economic, and environmental interrelationships on human health and the health of the planet. Knowledge of climate change is important for integration into basic and advanced nursing education, as well as professional education for nurses to address adverse health impacts, climate change responses policy, and advocacy roles. Clinical Relevance: For current and future nurses to provide care within a climate-changing environment, nursing education has a mandate to integrate knowledge about climate change issues across all levels of nursing education. Competence in nursing practice follows from knowledge and skill acquisition gained from integration of climate change content into nursing education. Calls to action for a response to the harmful health effects of global climate change drive the nursing profession to respond through nursing practice, research, advocacy,

Sustainability, 2023

This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY

Nutrients

Aimed at improving the quality of school meals, the Sustainable School Program (SSP) implemented low-carbon meals, twice a week, in 155 schools of 4 municipalities, reaching more than 32,000 students. This study evaluated the environmental impact and nutritional viability of this intervention for this population. The 15 most repeated meals from the conventional and sustainable menus were selected, and we considered the school age group and number of meals served per student/day. Nutritional information was calculated using validated food composition tables, nutritional adequacy was assessed using National School Feeding Program (PNAE) requirements, the level of processing was considered using NOVA classification, and greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE) were estimated using food life cycle assessment (LCA) validated data. We found both conventional and sustainable food menus are equivalent, in terms of nutrients, except for calcium, iron, and magnesium. Sustainable food menus were choles...

Royal Society Open Science, 2016

Terrestrial mammals are experiencing a massive collapse in their population sizes and geographical ranges around the world, but many of the drivers, patterns and consequences of this decline remain poorly understood. Here we provide an analysis showing that bushmeat hunting for mostly food and medicinal products is driving a global crisis whereby 301 terrestrial mammal species are threatened with extinction. Nearly all of these threatened species occur in developing countries where major coexisting threats include deforestation, agricultural expansion, human encroachment and competition with livestock. The unrelenting decline of mammals suggests many vital ecological and socio-economic services that these species provide will be lost, potentially changing ecosystems irrevocably. We discuss options and current obstacles to achieving effective conservation, alongside consequences of failure to stem such anthropogenic mammalian extirpation. We propose a multi-pronged conservation strat...

BMJ, 2021

The restoration and protection of natural habitats enhance biological diversity (biodiversity; box 1). These two concepts (natural habitats and biodiversity) are interdependent because complex symbiotic interspecies relationships are the foundation of thriving natural habitats. Nearly every aspect of our survival depends on exploiting natural resources-when land is converted for food production and housing, for example, or for the extraction of energy, raw materials, and water. The unsustainable use of natural resources has led to short term improvements in human health characterised by increases in life expectancy and a global decline in poverty. 1 But these are matched by an unprecedented alteration of the natural world characterised by loss of primary forests, species extinction, concentration of greenhouse gases, and ocean acidification, among others. 1 This has perilous consequences to the planet and to human health in the long term. Box 1: Biodiversity and ecosystems The Convention on Biological Diversity defines biological diversity (biodiversity) as the variability among living organisms from all sources (including terrestrial, marine, and other aquatic ecosystems) and the ecological complexes of which they are part. This includes diversity within species, between species, and of ecosystems. Ecosystem means a dynamic complex of plant, animal, and microorganism communities and their non-living environment interacting as a functional unit. Habitat means the place or type of site where an organism or population naturally occurs. Biodiversity should be preserved at three levels: ecosystem, species, and genetic. In other words, we should preserve a diversity of ecosystems on Earth, and within those ecosystems we should preserve a diversity of species, as the more biodiverse ecosystems are resilient to change. Genetic diversity within a species refers to all the genes and alleles contained in the individuals of that species. It serves as a reservoir of development possibilities, and it can help species adapt to future environment changes.

Frontiers in Marine Science, 2022

The ongoing contemporary biodiversity crisis may result in much of ocean’s biodiversity to be lost or deeply modified without even being known. As the climate and anthropogenic-related impacts on marine systems accelerate, biodiversity knowledge integration is urgently required to evaluate and monitor marine ecosystems and to support suitable responses to underpin a sustainable future. The Census of Marine Life (CoML, 2000–2010) was the largest global research program on marine biodiversity. A decade after, and coinciding with the steep increase of digitalization of our society, we review existing findability, accessibility, interoperability, and reusability (FAIR) biodiversity data coming from one of the most reliable online information systems: the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). We evaluate the completeness of available datasets with respect to the CoML benchmark, along with progresses in understanding spatial–temporal patterns of marine biodiversity in the Europ...

Frontiers in Nutrition

Religious fasting is practiced by people of all faiths, including Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Jainism, as well as Hinduism, Judaism, and Taoism. Individual/clinical, public, global, and planetary health has traditionally been studied as separate entities. Nevertheless, religious fasting, in conjunction with other religious health assets, can provide several opportunities, ranging from the individual to the population, environmental, and planetary levels, by facilitating and supporting societal transformations and changes, such as the adoption of healthier, more equitable, and sustainable lifestyles, therein preserving the Earth's systems and addressing major interconnected, cascading, and compound challenges. In this review, we will summarize the most recent evidence on the effects of religious fasting, particularly Orthodox and Ramadan Islamic fasting, on human and public health. Further, we will explore the potential effects of religious fasting on tackling current environm...

International Journal of Public Health, 2021

Objectives: Global environmental challenges demand sustainable behaviours and policies to protect human and planetary health. We aimed to summarize the evidence about the factors related to Sustainable Food Consumption (SFC) behaviours of university students, and to propose an operational categorization of SFC behaviours.Methods: Seven databases were searched for observational studies evaluating Sustainable Food Consumption (SFC) among university students and that reported at least one behavioural outcome measure. Qualitative synthesis was conducted, and PRISMA guidelines for reporting were followed.Results: Out of 4,479 unique references identified, 40 studies were selected. All studies examined personal factors, while 11 out of 40 also measured social or situational factors. Except for food waste, females had higher levels of SFC behaviours, but situational factors moderated this association. Knowledge and attitudes showed mixed results. Overall, sustainable food consumers reporte...

Public Health Forum

Water is a finite natural resource. Zero Water Day(s) scenarios are challenging people and communities in Europe and worldwide. The public health community must seize the opportunity to prepare for Zero Water Day(s) through strengthening capacity and capability to respond to rapidly emerging emergencies as well as protected crises. Collaboration across sectors on water conservation and public health is key to tackling the consumptive environment and extractive economic systems.

Biodiversity of Ecosystems, 2021

Agroecology is the application of ecological principles to agricultural systems and practices and the application of social justice principles to whole food systems. Agroecological farming, an unfamiliar concept to those who treat agriculture and ecology as separate subjects, refers to farming for producing food, employment and economic benefits in addition to cultural, social and environmental services and benefits. Additionally, agroecology empowers farming communities, as the key agents of change, and addresses the root cause of problems of unsustainable agricultural systems in an integrated way and provides holistic and long-term solutions to transform the food and agricultural systems. As agroecology is at the forefront of transforming farming and food system sustainability, the present chapter specifically explores the state of Indian traditional farming agroecosystems, evidence collected under the ongoing Indian UNEP-GEF project “Mainstreaming agricultural biodiversity conser...

PLOS Climate

While scientific research supporting mitigation of further global temperature rise remains a major priority, CoP26 and CoP27 saw increased recognition of the importance of research that informs adaptation to irreversible changes in climate and the increasing threats of extreme weather events. Such work is inevitably and appropriately contextual, but efforts to generalise principles that inform local strategies for adaptation and resilience are likely crucial. Systems approaches are particularly promising in this regard. This study adopted a system dynamics framing to consider linkages between climate change and population health across four low- and middle-income country settings with a view to identifying priority inter-sectoral adaptation measures in each. On the basis of a focused literature review in each setting, we developed preliminary causal loop diagrams (CLD) addressing dynamics operating in Mozambique, Lebanon, Costa Rica, and Georgia. Participatory workshops in each sett...

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2020

Climate change strongly impacts the agricultural sector in West Africa, threatening food security and nutrition, particularly for populations with the least adaptive capacity. Little is known about national climate change policies in the region. This systematic review identifies and analyses climate change policy documents in all 16 West African countries: (1) What are the existing climate change adaptation policies publicly available? (2) Which topics are addressed? (3) How are agriculture and food security framed and addressed? Following PRISMA guidelines, PubMed and Google scholar as key databases were searched with an extensive grey literature search. Keywords for searches were combinations of “Africa”, “Climate Change”, and “National Policy/Plan/Strategy/Guideline”. Fifteen countries have at least one national policy document on climate change in the frame of our study. Nineteen policy documents covered seven key sectors (energy, agriculture, water resources, health, forestry, ...

OMICS: A Journal of Integrative Biology, 2020

After the initial emergency responses deployed to control the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic in the first half of 2020, we should now start thinking about long-term strategies and concepts for pandemic and disaster governance such as resilience. In this context, COVID-19 health care and education are especially important because they are essential public goods that determine what kind of a society we live in, during the pandemic and afterward. So for, the focus has been a tactical efficiency perspective that prioritized instrumental, logistical, or pragmatic aspects in planetary health and university education, with much less attention paid to social justice, history of inequity, and power asymmetries that affect the pandemic impacts in society. For a resilient COVID-19 response, we need to address not only medical, technical, and logistical challenges, but also the social disparities that are inherited from the prepandemic world that are negatively affecting the current pandemic outcomes.

Challenges

A new network of over 72 organizations from 12 countries was activated during a convening at ARTIS in Amsterdam on 26–27 September 2022. Representatives are aligned with the transdisciplinary field and social movement of Planetary Health, which analyzes and addresses the impacts of human disruptions to natural systems on human health and all life on Earth. The new European Planetary Health Hub consists of organizations from various sectors, including universities, healthcare, youth, business, and civil society. The Convening, co-organized by the Planetary Health Alliance (PHA), the European Environment and Sustainable Development Advisory Councils Network (EEAC), and Natura Artis Magistra (ARTIS), aimed to develop Planetary Health Working Groups for Education, Policy Engagement, Research, and Movement Building. The Convening resulted in an outline for each of the Working Group’s aims, visions, missions, priorities, and activities, and set the framework for sustaining their activitie...

Global Policy, 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic, which has brought the world economy to an unprecedented synchronized recession, makes for a profound collective global experience. It should urge us to reshape our collective actions.

Journal of Governance and Regulation, 2020

This study aims to explore the different forms of corporate governance in the health sector, how they interact, and analyze the emerging research trend through a systematic literature review (SLR) in the period 2015-2019. The Scopus and ISI Web of Science databases were used to select the 167 articles analyzed. The coverage of corporate governance research was centred on adapting the PRISMA analysis, highlighting the environment which corporate governance belongs to and analysis of the co-occurrence of the keywords used in the studies. Through Grounded theory, a conceptual model was developed, emphasizing the main attributes that influence governance at the macro-, meso- and micro-levels, in the health area, and raising a future agenda for future research in this area: (1) quality of health care, (2) corporate social responsibility in health, (3) health risk management and (4) global health governance. The results of this research aim to guide governments towards emerging regulatory...

Nature: Humanities and Social Sciences Communications

By broadening disciplinary perspectives to architecture and design, philosophy of science, and systems biology, this paper aims to explore the interconnections between built, social, biotic, and health processes with key attention to the moderating roles of the built environment. The focus is part diagnostic and part prescriptive. Initially, we specify failures in COVID-19 representational infrastructure and practice in accounting for built environment and social process impacts on public health factors. By presenting three intertwined problems with scientific representation in COVID-19 modeling and data-gathering, we examine to what extent current scientific practices fail to robustly account for the complex intersections between built, biotic, social, and health processes. We suggest that resolving the presented problems requires the development of new conceptual precedents for the analysis of causal relations in changing contexts. The second focal point is prescriptive. By discus...

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health

Global food systems are a central issue for personal and planetary health in the Anthropocene. One aspect of major concern is the dramatic global spread of ultra-processed convenience foods in the last 75 years, which is linked with the rising human burden of disease and growing sustainability and environmental health challenges. However, there are also calls to radically transform global food systems, from animal to plant-derived protein sources, which may have unintended consequences. Commercial entities have moved toward this “great plant transition” with vigor. Whether motivated by profit or genuine environmental concern, this effort has facilitated the emergence of novel ultra-processed “plant-based” commercial products devoid of nutrients and fiber, and sometimes inclusive of high sugar, industrial fats, and synthetic additives. These and other ingredients combined into “plant-based” foods are often assumed to be healthy and lower in calorie content. However, the available evi...

Philosophy of Medicine

The Covid-19 pandemic has challenged both medicine and governments as they have strived to confront the pandemic and its consequences. One major challenge is that evidence-based medicine has struggled to provide timely and necessary evidence to guide medical practice and public policy formulation. We propose an extension of evidence-based corona medicine to an organismic systems corona medicine as a multilevel conceptual framework to develop a robust concept-oriented medical system. The proposed organismic systems corona medicine could help to prevent or mitigate future pandemics by transitioning to a bifocal medicine that extends an empirical evidence-based medicine to a theory-oriented organismic systems medicine.

Challenges, 2019

Four decades ago, several health movements were sprouting in isolation. In 1980, the environmental group Friends of the Earth expanded the World Health Organization definition of health, reminding citizenry that, “health is a state of complete physical, mental, social and ecological well-being and not merely the absence of disease—personal health involves planetary health”. At the same time, a small group of medical clinicians were voicing the concept of “clinical ecology”—that is, a perspective that sees illness, especially chronic illness, as a response to the total lived experience and the surroundings in which “exposures” accumulate. In parallel, other groups advanced the concept of holistic medicine. In 1977, the progressive physician-scientist Jonas Salk stated that “we are entering into a new Epoch in which holistic medicine will be the dominant model”. However, only recently have the primary messages of these mostly isolated movements merged into a unified interdisciplinary ...

International Journal of Health Governance

PurposeThe world is confronted by various current development challenges, including global health security and climate change. The rapid growth of these challenges warned all nations regardless of their development or geographical position. As an emerging international power, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) was among these nations and is viewed as a proactive key actor.Design/methodology/approachThis review was conducted as a thematic synthesis from 27 studies, reports and publications along with authors' insights. Using MS Word and Excel programs, three stages of data exploration, extraction and synthesis and analysis were applied. Data gathering, analysis and thematization and compilation.FindingsThe UAE is giving significant attention to global health and climate change. Over the past 20 years, multipolicies, strategies and bodies were developed to lead the national, regional and global SDGs. Global health and climate change became the most two notable priorities on the govern...

BMC Global and Public Health

Sustainablehealth, a multisectoral area for study, research, and practice towards improving health and well-being for all while staying within planetary boundaries, is a prerequisite to reaching the 2030 agenda and the work and journey towards a world in which everyone, everywhere can live a healthy and fulfilled life.

Bundesgesundheitsblatt - Gesundheitsforschung - Gesundheitsschutz

ZusammenfassungIm 21. Jahrhundert führt eine Anhäufung komplexer Krisen wie Klimawandel, Biodiversitätsverlust, Umweltverschmutzungen, Kriege und Pandemien zu ökonomischen, sozialen und gesundheitlichen Problemen für Menschen jetziger und zukünftiger Generationen. Diese Probleme sind im Wesentlichen auf die Missachtung natürlicher Regenerationskapazitäten von Ökosystemen zurückzuführen. Gesundheitsansätze wie One Health und Planetary Health haben seit Beginn der 2000er-Jahre an Popularität gewonnen und finden verstärkt Anwendung in der Politik, der Wissenschaft und in den Gesundheitsberufen. Auch die Umweltmedizin wird durch die wachsende Zahl von Krisen und Umweltproblemen sowie das zunehmende Interesse an den Konzepten One Health und Planetary Health beeinflusst.In diesem Diskussionsbeitrag wird zunächst die Entwicklung der beiden Konzepte dargestellt. Danach wird auf ihre Bedeutung für die Umweltmedizin eingegangen. Ärztinnen und Ärzte, die sich mit umweltmedizinischen Themen bef...

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health

Health-promoting and sustainable behaviors, such as active transportation and sustainable diets, are associated with positive effects on human health and the environment. In order to unlock the potential of university students as key actors and multipliers, it is of interest to investigate their level of knowledge about the health effects of climate change and their willingness toward and implementation of health-promoting and sustainable behaviors. In November 2021, an online survey was conducted among students at the University of Regensburg, Germany. A total of 3756 participants (response rate 18%; mean age 23 years; 69% women) provided valid data. A large proportion of medical students (48%) considered themselves well-informed about the health-related effects of climate change, while only a small proportion (22%) of students within economic/computer/data sciences and law felt informed. Most participants knew about the impact of climate change on malnutrition (78%), but considera...

Sustainability

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Food Security

A global transformation of food systems is needed, given their impact on the three interconnected pandemics of undernutrition, obesity and climate change. A scoping review was conducted to synthesise the effectiveness of food system policies/interventions to improve nutrition, nutrition inequalities and environmental sustainability, and to identify double- or triple-duty potentials (their effectiveness tackling simultaneously two or all of these outcomes). When available, their effects on nutritional vulnerabilities and women’s empowerment were described. The policies/interventions studied were derived from a compilation of international recommendations. The literature search was conducted according to the PRISMA extension for scoping reviews. A total of 196 reviews were included in the analysis. The triple-duty interventions identified were sustainable agriculture practices and school food programmes. Labelling, reformulation, in-store nudging interventions and fiscal measures show...

Global Food Security, 2021

Recognized as an emerging global crisis in the mid-1990s, the "nutrition transition" is marked by a shift to Western diets, dominated by highly processed, sugar-sweetened, and high caloric foods. Occurring in parallel to these health transitions are dramatic shifts in the natural systems that underlie food availability and access. Traditionally, environmental degradation and ecosystem change, and processes of nutritional transition, though often collinear and potentially causally linked, have been addressed in isolation. Food systems represent an emblematic social-ecological system, as both cultivated and wild foods are directly reliant on natural ecosystems and their processes. While healthy ecosystems are a necessary precondition of food production, they are not themselves sufficient to ensure continued benefits from local food systems. Mediating between food production and nutritional security are myriad governance and market institutions that shape differential access to food resources. Moreover, globalization and urbanization may shift communities from non-market to market-based economies, with profound implications for local environments and food systems. Specifically, we argue that it is this feedback between coupled socioeconomic and natural dynamics within food systems that reinforces specific nutritional outcomes, and may result in a social-ecological trap. Here, we use the case of reef-based food systems globally, paying particular attention to the Pacific to showcase social-ecological traps present in global food systems, and to illustrate how such traps lead to the acceleration of the nutrition transition. Improving both nutritional and environmental outcomes of food systems requires understanding the underlying drivers of each, and how they interact and reinforce each other. Only in recognizing these interactions and coupled dynamics will economic, governance, and environmental policies be positioned to address these food system challenges in an integrated fashion.

Sustainability, 2022

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Sustainability Science

Addressing increasingly urgent global challenges requires the rapid mobilisation of new research groups that are large in scale, co-produced and focussed explicitly on investigating root causes at a systemic level. This requires new ways of operationalising and funding research programmes to better support effective interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary (ID/TD) partnerships between a wide range of academic disciplines and stakeholder groups. Understanding the challenges and approaches that teams can follow to overcome them can come through critical reflection on experiences initiating new research programmes of this nature and sharing of these reflections. We aimed to offer a framework for critical reflection and an overview of how we developed it and to share our reflections on operationalising a newly formed large-scale ID/TD research programme. We present a framework of 10 areas for critical reflection: systems, unknowns and imperfection, ID/TD understanding, values, societal i...

Arab journal of basic and applied sciences, 2020

Irrefutable evidence of the adverse effects of meat consumption on health and environment, prompts an urgent need to raise awareness about moving from animal based dietary patterns to more plant based ones. Meat alternatives and meat analogues can help achieve this objective and at the same time satisfy the nutritional needs and the sensory appeal for the discerning palates of vegans, vegetarians, and meat-lovers. Recent research and development in the food industry has created meat analogues that may come very close to meats in their nutritional and sensory appeal. This paper presents a review of the available alternatives to meat with special emphasis on meat analogues mainly comprising soy, wheat gluten and mycoproteins. The paper also highlights the main processes involved in producing these meat analogues, their nutritional values, advantages, disadvantages and recognizes the scope of popularizing meat alternatives in Bahrain.

Public Health Nursing

Objective: To describe types of strategic actions nurses take to promote environmental justice (EJ) through research, education, advocacy, and practice (REAP) reported in peer-reviewed literature. Design and Sample: A scoping review of literature was conducted that described EJ nursing strategies and included nurses listed as authors, subjects, partners, or organizational members. The sample consisted of 35 articles, representing 24 primary research studies and 11 nonresearch articles. Data were separately analyzed by research and nonresearch articles for a clearer understanding of evidence-based strategies within domains of REAP. Results: Articles in the sample highlighted the importance of authentic community partnership and represented diversity of nursing strategies that addressed a range of environmental exposures and subsequent health and racial inequities. Climate justice, a concept that emerged from the EJ movement and intersects with planetary health, is a recent focus in professional nursing. Conclusions: This scoping review establishes an understanding of the extent of nursing knowledge and research in EJ and lays the groundwork for further research on effective EJ nursing strategies. Community-Based Participatory Research/ Participatory Action Research methods are fundamental for EJ research, and further theoretical development is needed to guide evaluation of EJ nursing strategies for education, advocacy, and practice.

Cambridge University Press eBooks, 2021

The purpose of this Review is to provide evidence for why gender equality in science, medicine, and global health matters for health and health-related outcomes. We present a high-level synthesis of global gender data, summarise progress towards gender equality in science, medicine, and global health, review the evidence for why gender equality in these fields matters in terms of health and social outcomes, and reflect on strategies to promote change. Notwithstanding the evolving landscape of global gender data, the overall pattern of gender equality for women in science, medicine, and global health is one of mixed gains and persistent challenges. Gender equality in science, medicine, and global health has the potential to lead to substantial health, social, and economic gains. Positioned within an evolving landscape of gender activism and evidence, our Review highlights missed and future opportunities, as well as the need to draw upon contemporary social movements to advance the field.

BMJ Nutrition, Prevention & Health

Background to issueFuture sustainable healthcare delivery and systems need reflective practitioners and critical thinkers to engage the public to achieve health policy aims and objectives. Therefore, this descriptive review introduces a generic conceptual framework, adopting a specific theme to illustrate and demonstrate a model of care or any other context. Whatever the purpose, context or philosophical stance in healthcare and health literacy, there is no standardised generic conceptual framework to structure reflection and critical thinking. This work presents a pragmatic solution focused on the one-to-one relationship of learner–mentor, patient–clinician, public health professional–public and groups.MethodsThe method is constructivist, an educational exercise, practical and the target group can be defined/viewed as student, teacher, patient, carer or member of the public in a health promotion campaign, for example. The building blocks are health and care concepts that arise clin...

2022

IntroductionPolicies to mitigate climate change are essential. The objective of this paper was to estimate the impact of greenhouse gas (GHG) food taxes and assess whether such a tax could also have health benefits and reduce ethnic inequalities in health in Aotearoa NZ.MethodsWe undertook a systemised review on GHG food taxes to inform four tax scenarios, including one combined with a subsidy. These scenarios were modelled to estimate lifetime impacts on quality adjusted health years (QALY), health inequities by ethnicity, GHG emissions, health system costs and food costs to the individual.Results28 modelling studies on food tax policies were identified. Taxes resulted in decreased consumption of the targeted foods (e.g., -15.4% in beef/ruminant consumption, N=12 studies) and an average decrease of 8.3% in GHG emissions (N=19 studies). Using this review, we conceptualized four scenarios: a GHG weighted tax on all foods; a GHG weighted tax on food groups with the highest 50% of emis...

F1000Research, 2019

Climate change is one of today's major challenges, among the causes of population movements and international migration. Climate migrants impact health systems and how they respond and adapt to their needs and patterns. But to date, the resilience of health systems in the context of climate change has been little explored. The purpose of this article is to show the importance of studying, from an interdisciplinary perspective, the relationships between climate change, migration, and the resilience of health systems. Resilience is an old concept, notably in the field of psychology, and is increasingly applied to the study of health systems. Yet, no research has analysed the resilience of health systems in the context of climate change. While universal health coverage is a major international goal, little research has to date focused on the existing links between climate, migration, health systems and resilience. We propose an interdisciplinary approach relying on the concept of h...

BMJ, 2020

and colleagues argue that multidisciplinary action in planning and health will contribute to more equitable communities and improved health and wellbeing

2020

BackgroundMultiple bacteria, viruses, protists, and helminths cause enteric infections that greatly impact human health and wellbeing. These enteropathogens are transmitted via several pathways through human, animal, and environmental reservoirs. Individual quantitative PCR (qPCR) assays have been extensively used to detect enteropathogens within these types of samples, whereas the TaqMan Array Card (TAC) that allows simultaneous detection of multiple enteropathogens has only previously been validated in human clinical samples.MethodsHere, we performed a comprehensive double-blinded comparison of the performance of a custom TAC relative to standard qPCR for the detection of eight enteric targets, by using spiked samples, wastewater from Melbourne (Australia), and human, animal, and environmental samples from informal settlements in Suva, Fiji.FindingsBoth methods exhibited high and comparable specificity (TAC: 100%, qPCR: 94%), sensitivity (TAC: 92%; qPCR: 100%), and quantitation ac...

Physiotherapy Theory and Practice, 2021

Introduction: The relevance of ecosystems to physiotherapy has traditionally been overlooked, despite its potential for positive health impacts relevant to conditions often managed by physiotherapists. Purpose: The purpose of this article is to introduce the concept of ecosystem services to physiotherapists, and to discuss how understanding ecosystem services may improve patient care, and population and planetary health. Discussion and Conclusion: Physiotherapists with an understanding of ecosystem services may improve patient care by value-adding to management through patient education, empathy, advocacy, and broader population health approaches. Physiotherapists are also well placed to promote the conservation and restoration of ecosystem through participation, advocacy, and the development of public health measures, to the benefit of global sustainability and population health. Further research is required into how physiotherapists currently use nature-based interventions, and the barriers and enablers to their use. To be adequately prepared to meet the challenges that climate change and environmental degradation pose to patient care, population health and health systems, both current and future physiotherapists need to take a broader view of their practice. By including consideration of the potential role of the environment and green space exposure in particular on their patient's health, physiotherapists can ultimately contribute more to population and planetary health.

Allergy, Asthma & Immunology Research

The worldwide prevalence of allergic disease is rising as a result of complex gene-environment interactions that shape the immune system and host response. Climate change and loss of biodiversity are existential threats to humans, animals, plants, and ecosystems. While there is significant progress in the development of targeted therapeutic options to treat allergies and asthma, these approaches are inadequate to meet the challenges faced by climate change. The exposomic approach is needed with the recognition of the bidirectional effect between human beings and the environment. All stakeholders need to work together toward mitigating the effects of climate change and promoting a One Health concept in order to decrease the burden of asthma and allergy and to improve immune health. Healthcare professionals should strive to incorporate One Health counseling, environmental health precepts, and advocacy into their practice.

Water

Water supply is strategic for the development of society. The water distribution in nature follows patterns linked to geographic and territorial issues. Climate fluctuations aggravate shortage problems in semi-arid regions. This study aims to develop a systematic review of research on water scarcity in semi-arid areas through bibliometric methods that allow the analysis of its structure, performance, evolution, and future trends. The methodology considers three phases: (i) literature review, (ii) data cleaning and processing, and (iii) analysis of the research field and future trends. The intellectual structure of water scarcity in semi-arid zones covers 2206 documents with the collaboration of sixty-one countries, distributed in studies carried out in 54 years (1967 to 2021). This field of research has been growing, especially since the 21st century (93.1% of the documents). The countries that study the issue the most are those with high population rates and large consumption patte...

FACETS

Given the enormous global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, outbreaks of highly pathogenic avian influenza in Canada, and manifold other zoonotic pathogen activity, there is a pressing need for a deeper understanding of the human-animal-environment interface and the intersecting biological, ecological, and societal factors contributing to the emergence, spread, and impact of zoonotic diseases. We aim to apply a One Health approach to pressing issues related to emerging zoonoses, and propose a functional framework of interconnected but distinct groups of recommendations around strategy and governance, technical leadership (operations), equity, education and research for a One Health approach and Action Plan for Canada. Change is desperately needed, beginning by reorienting our approach to health and recalibrating our perspectives to restore balance with the natural world in a rapid and sustainable fashion. In Canada, a major paradigm shift in how we think about health is required. All...

BMJ Global Health, 2023

Global health requires evidence-based approaches to improve health and decrease inequalities. In a roundtable discussion between health practitioners, funders, academics and policy-makers, we recognised key areas for improvement to deliver better-informed, sustainable and equitable global health practices. These focus on considering information-sharing mechanisms and developing evidence-based frameworks that take an adaptive function-based approach, grounded in the ability to perform and respond to prioritised needs. Increasing social engagement as well as sector and participant diversity in whole-of-society decision-making, and collaborating with and optimising on hyperlocal and global regional entities, will improve prioritisation of global health capabilities. Since the skills required to navigate drivers of pandemics, and the challenges in prioritising, capacity building and response do not sit squarely in the health sector, it is essential to integrate expertise from a broad range of fields to maximise on available knowledge during decision-making and system development. Here, we review the current assessment tools and provide seven discussion points for how improvements to implementation of evidence-based prioritisation can improve global health.

Clinical and Translational Allergy, 2020

In December 2019, a conference entitled "Europe That Protects: Safeguarding Our Planet, Safeguarding Our Health" was held in Helsinki. It was co-organized by the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare, the Finnish Environment Institute and the European Commission, under the auspices of Finland's Presidency of the EU. As a side event, a symposium organized as the final POLLAR (Impact of air POLLution on Asthma and Rhinitis) meeting explored the digital transformation of health and care to sustain planetary health in airway diseases. The Finnish Allergy Programme collaborates with MASK (Mobile Airways Sentinel NetworK) and can be considered as a proof-of-concept to impact

BMJ Global Health

This article argues that human health has become a key consideration in recent global reports on climate change and biodiversity produced by various international organisations; however, greater attention must be given to the unequal health impacts of climate change and biodiversity loss around the world and the different health adaptation measures that are urgently required.

Advances in Nutrition, 2021

Interventions are urgently needed to transform the food system and shift population eating patterns toward those consistent with human health and environmental sustainability. Postsecondary campuses offer a naturalistic setting to trial interventions to improve the health of students and provide insight into interventions that could be scaled up in other settings. However, the current state of the evidence on interventions to support healthy and environmentally sustainable eating within postsecondary settings is not well understood. A scoping review of food-and nutritionrelated interventions implemented and evaluated on postsecondary campuses was conducted to determine the extent to which they integrate considerations related to human health and/or environmental sustainability, as well as to synthesize the nature and effectiveness of interventions and to identify knowledge gaps in the literature. MEDLINE (via PubMed), CINAHL, Scopus, and ERIC were searched to identify articles describing naturalistic campus food interventions published in English from January 2015 to December 2019. Data were extracted from 38 peer-reviewed articles, representing 37 unique interventions, and synthesized according to policy domains within the World Cancer Research Foundation's NOURISHING framework. Most interventions were focused on supporting human health, whereas considerations related to environmental sustainability were minimal. Interventions to support human health primarily sought to increase nutrition knowledge or to make complementary shifts in food environments, such as through nutrition labeling at point of purchase. Interventions to support environmental sustainability often focused on reducing food waste and few emphasized consumption patterns with lower environmental impacts. The implementation of integrated approaches considering the complexity and interconnectivity of human and planetary health is needed. Such approaches must go beyond the individual to alter the structural determinants that shape our food system and eating patterns.

World

While high fertility levels in sub-Saharan Africa pose multiple challenges for economic, social, and environmental prospects, the perspectives of actors from this region have not been well documented. We offer a selection of viewpoints from 42 countries in sub-Saharan Africa along four main dimensions: perceptions of the role of population growth for broader societal implications; the representation of sub-Saharan Africa in discussions of population growth; the integration of population dynamics and reproductive health and rights in environmental considerations and instruments; and the sensitive nature of the topic of population growth. A mixed-methods qualitative project was conducted, using an online survey of 402 participants followed by 18 in-depth interviews, to collect the views of policy makers, researchers, and activists in sub-Saharan Africa. We find overwhelming agreement that population growth has negative implications for environmental sustainability and other social wel...

Frontiers in Public Health, 2022

Tropical diseases, travel medicine and vaccines, 2019

Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) remains a leading cause of global morbidity with the highest burden in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). For reasons that are incompletely understood, the likelihood of HIV transmission is several fold higher in SSA than in higher income countries, and most of these infections are acquired by young women. Residents of SSA are also exposed to a variety of endemic infections, such as malaria and various helminthiases that could influence mucosal and systemic immunology. Since these immune parameters are important determinants of HIV acquisition and progression, this review explores the possible effects of endemic infections on HIV susceptibility and summarizes current knowledge of the epidemiology and underlying immunological mechanisms by which endemic infections could impact HIV acquisition. A better understanding of the interaction between endemic infections and HIV may enhance HIV prevention programs in SSA.

Global health and development communities lack sustainable, cost-effective, mutually beneficial solutions for infectious disease, food, water, and poverty challenges despite their regular interdependence worldwide1-7. Here, we show that agricultural development and fertilizer use in west Africa increase the devastating tropical disease schistosomiasis by fueling the growth of submerged aquatic vegetation that chokes out water access points and serves as habitat for snails that transmit Schistosoma parasites to >200 million people globally8-10. In a randomized control trial where we removed invasive submerged vegetation from water points, control sites had 124% higher fecal Schistosoma reinfection rates in schoolchildren and lower open water access than removal sites without any detectable long-term adverse effects of the removal on local water quality or freshwater biodiversity. The removed vegetation was as effective as traditional livestock feed but 41-179 times cheaper and con...

Revista Brasileira De Zootecnia, 2017

Tree legumes are an underexploited resource in warm-climate silvopastures. Perceived benefits of tree legumes include provisioning (browse/mast, timber, fuel, human food, natural medicines, and ornamentals), regulating (C sequestration, greenhouse gas mitigation, soil erosion control and riparian buffers, shade, windbreaks, and habitat for pollinators), supporting (biological N 2-fixation, nutrient cycling, soil fertility and soil health, photosynthesis, and primary productivity), and cultural ecosystem services. Tree legumes, however, have not been assessed to the same extent as herbaceous legumes. Once tree legumes are established, they are often more persistent than most herbaceous legumes. There are limitations for extended research with tree legume silvopastures, but extensive research has been done in Africa and Australia and recent efforts have been reported in South America. Economic benefits must be demonstrated to land managers to increase adoption. These benefits are apparent in the research and successes already available, but more long-term research, including the livestock component is necessary. Other factors that reduce adoption include paucity of domesticated germplasm, lag in research/technology, challenges of multipurpose trees and management complexity, challenges to mechanization, dangers of invasive weeds, and social and cultural barriers. In the current scenario of climate change and the need to increase food security, tree legumes are a key component for the sustainable intensification of livestock systems in warm-climate regions.

Revista Brasileira de Política Internacional, 2018

Este é um artigo publicado em acesso aberto e distribuído sob os termos da Licença de Atribuição Creative Commons, que permite uso irrestrito, distribuição e reprodução em qualquer meio, desde que o autor e a fonte originais sejam creditados.

Frontiers in Allergy

Contact with natural environments enriches the human microbiome, promotes immune balance and protects against allergies and inflammatory disorders. In Finland, the allergy & asthma epidemic became slowly visible in mid 1960s. After the World War II, Karelia was split into Finnish and Soviet Union (now Russia) territories. This led to more marked environmental and lifestyle changes in the Finnish compared with Russian Karelia.The Karelia Allergy Study 2002–2022showed that allergic conditions were much more common on the Finnish side. The Russians had richer gene-microbe network and interaction than the Finns, which associated with better balanced immune regulatory circuits and lower allergy prevalence. In the Finnish adolescents, a biodiverse natural environment around the homes associated with lower occurrence of allergies. Overall, the plausible explanation of the allergy disparity was the prominent change in environment and lifestyle in the Finnish Karelia from 1940s to 1980s. The...

Evolutionary Biology-new York, 2021

An accurate classification is the basis for research in biology. Morphometrics and morphospecies play an important role in modern taxonomy, with geometric morphometrics increasingly applied as a favourite analytical tool. Yet, really large samples are seldom available for modern species and even less common in palaeontology, where morphospecies are often identified, described and compared using just one or a very few specimens. The impact of sampling error and how large a sample must be to mitigate the inaccuracy are important questions for morphometrics and taxonomy. Using more than 4000 crania of adult mammals and taxa representing each of the four placental superorders, we assess the impacts of sampling error on estimates of species means, variances and covariances in Procrustes shape data using resampling experiments. In each group of closely related species (mostly congeneric), we found that a species can be identified fairly accurately even when means are based on relatively small samples, although errors are frequent with fewer specimens and primates more prone to inaccuracies. A precise reconstruction of similarity relationships, in contrast, sometimes requires very large samples (> 100), but this varies widely depending on the study group. Medium-sized samples are necessary to accurately estimate standard errors of mean shapes or intraspecific variance covariance structure, but in this case minimum sample sizes are broadly similar across all groups (≈ 20-50 individuals). Overall, thus, the minimum sample sized required for a study varies across taxa and depends on what is being assessed, but about 25-40 specimens (for each sex, if a species is sexually dimorphic) may be on average an adequate and attainable minimum sample size for estimating the most commonly used shape parameters. As expected, the best predictor of the effects of sampling error is the ratio of between-to within-species variation: the larger the ratio, the smaller the sample size needed to obtain the same level of accuracy. Even though ours is the largest study to date of the uncertainties in estimates of means, variances and covariances in geometric morphometrics, and despite its generally high congruence with previous analyses, we feel it would be premature to generalize. Clearly, there is no a priori answer for what minimum sample size is required for a particular study and no universal recipe to control for sampling error. Exploratory analyses using resampling experiments are thus desirable, easy to perform and yield powerful preliminary clues about the effect of sampling on parameter estimates in comparative studies of morphospecies, and in a variety of other morphometric applications in biology and medicine. Morphospecies descriptions are indeed a small piece of provisional evidence in a much more complex evolutionary puzzle. However, they are crucial in palaeontology, and provide important complimentary evidence in modern integrative taxonomy. Thus, if taxonomy provides the bricks for accurate research in biology, understanding the robustness of these bricks is the first fundamental step to build scientific knowledge on sound, stable and long-lasting foundations. fields of biology and is crucial even for medical doctors who face new diseases emerging from disrupted ecosystems (Olival et al., 2017; Mollentze and Streicker, 2020; Rodriguez-Morales et al., 2020). Sir Robert May's famous statement on the centrality of taxonomy in biology remains as current as ever: "without taxonomy to give shape to the bricks [i.e., organisms] ... the house of biological science is a meaningless jumble" (p. 130 (May, 1990)). Yet, delimiting taxonomic boundaries remains a complex and sometimes contentious issue, with grey areas which may elude the application of any general species concept (Zachos, 2016). A fundamental operational step in taxonomy is species description and identification. Descriptions were traditionally based on morphology, which is still the main source of information for identification in the field. In palaeontology, taxonomy is overwhelmingly based on morphology, so that the vast majority of fossil species are in fact morphospecies (Simpson, 1943, 1951; Harrison, 1993). Genetics has become increasingly important for assessing taxonomy, but DNA evidence is only available for modern species and recent subfossils. Ideally, multiple lines of evidence should be taken into account to accurately describe and identify a species. This type of "integrative taxonomy" (Dayrat, 2005; Padial et al., 2010) is just 15 years old formally (i.e., since the name has been proposed, although a 'total evidence' approach is much older-e.g., Kluge, 1989). However, it has encountered a slowly but constantly growing popularity: searching for references in google scholar (on January 5 th 2021) using "integrative taxonomy" AND "species description", the number of entries retrieved for 2005, 2012 and 2019 is 4, 40 and 137 respectively, and the total number, since 2005, when the name was coined, is 975. Often, integrative taxonomy employs molecular evidence together with morphometric analysis. Geometric morphometrics (Rohlf and Marcus, 1993; Zelditch et al., 2012; Cardini and Loy, 2013), a combination of image analysis and multivariate statistics, is particularly suitable to this aim, because it is relatively simple but at the same time powerful and effective in data collection and visualization (Adams et al., 2004, 2013). In mammals, one of the taxonomically best studied groups of animals, successful applications of integrative approaches are common. For instance, a combination of molecular and morphometric analyses, together with behavioural and biogeographic data, has brought to the recent discovery of cryptic diversity, and thus a new species, among orangutans, possibly one of the most studied, as well as endangered, genera of primates (Nater et al., 2017). Comparing groups using morphometrics is an important tool in species assessment also in palaeontology. Although fossil species rarely have large comparative samples and are often defined by meristic apomorphies (e.g., the number of molar or premolar cusps or the presence, or absence of foramina), quantitative studies of continuous traits are not uncommon and are in fact routinely used, for instance, in palaeoanthropology. Indeed, the whole field of virtual anthropology originated from the use of a mix of geometric morphometrics and 3D imaging techniques, with extensive applications to reconstruct and compare fragmentary material to produce results unachievable with traditional non-quantitative methods (e.g., Hublin et al., 2009, 2017). More generally, in recent years, taxonomists have turned increasingly frequently to geometric morphometrics to assign living or fossil specimens to species-level taxa using clustering methods, discriminant functions or other morphometric analyses, with variable accuracy depending on the variability and overlap of the morphologies of the species in question as well as the morphometric sample available to the researcher (e.g.,

Urban science, 2023

This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY

Archives of public health, 2022

Background: In order to understand the pandemic COVID-19 crisis in a forward-looking way, the French High Council for public health (HCSP) has designed a conceptual scheme for public health planning based on L. Green's model in order to better understand the issues at stake, by identifying dangers and levers for action. The final aim was to establish priorities and guidelines in order to anticipate the collateral consequences of the management of the crisis and be better prepared for the next one. Method: A public health conceptual framework PRECEDE-PROCEED adapted to the Covid-19 health crisis was developed using both a graphic (concept map) and analytic (to make the conceptual scheme functional) approaches. Then, a "meta-method" was applied using three distinct cognitive stages: understanding, anticipation and proposals of action. Results: The conceptual framework was broken down into 10 technical sheets covering essential diagnoses and integrating different public health determinants. Each of these was broken down into three cognitive stages, allowing for a diagnosis of understanding, a scenario of anticipation and a strategic analysis of action according to the chronology: understand-anticipate-propose. From these 10 technical sheets, 32 guidelines have been proposed. Conclusion: This work is intended to allow reflections on public health approaches to strengthen and anticipate health crisis management and health planning by politic managers working at national or sub-national level.

BMC Proceedings, 2023

The World Health Assembly resolution 68.15 recognised emergency and essential surgery as a critical component of universal health coverage. The first session of the three-part virtual meeting series on Strategic Planning to Improve Surgical, Obstetric, Anaesthesia, and Trauma Care in the Asia-Pacific Region focused on the current status of surgical care and opportunities for improvement. During this session, Ministries of Health and World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Directors shared country-and regional-level progress in surgical system strengthening. The WHO Western Pacific Regional Office (WPRO) has developed an Action Framework for Safe and Affordable Surgery, whilst the WHO South-East Asia Regional Office (SEARO) highlighted their efforts in emergency obstetric care, workforce strengthening, and blood safety. Numerous countries have begun developing and implementing National Surgical, Obstetric, and Anaesthesia Plans (NSOAPs). Participants agreed surgical system strengthening is an integral component of universal health coverage, pandemic preparedness, and overall health system resilience. Participants discussed common challenges, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, workforce capacity building, and improving access for hard-to-reach populations. They generated and shared common solutions, including strengthening surgical care capacity in first-level hospitals, anaesthesia task-shifting, remote training, and integrating surgical care with public health, preventive care, and emergency preparedness. Moving forward, participants committed to developing and implementing NSOAPs and agreed on the need to raise political awareness, build a broad-based movement, and form intersectoral collaborations.

Frontiers in Psychology

The positive psychology (PP) landscape is changing, and its initial identity is being challenged. Moving beyond the “third wave of PP,” two roads for future research and practice in well-being studies are discerned: The first is the state of the art PP trajectory that will (for the near future) continue as a scientific (sub)discipline in/next to psychology (because of its popular brand name). The second trajectory (main focus of this manuscript) links to pointers described as part of the so-called third wave of PP, which will be argued as actually being the beginning of a new domain of inter- or transdisciplinary well-being studies in its own right. It has a broader scope than the state of the art in PP, but is more delineated than in planetary well-being studies. It is in particular suitable to understand the complex nature of bio-psycho-social-ecological well-being, and to promote health and wellness in times of enormous challenges and changes. A unique cohering focus for this pos...

BMJ, 2019

Scientific Reports, 2022

Agricultural intensification and expanding protected areas are proposed sustainable development approaches. But, their consequences for mental health are poorly understood. This study aims to predict how forest conservation and contract farming may alter resource access and depression risk in rural Uganda. Residents (N = 695) in 11 communities in Masindi District were asked about their expectations under land management scenarios using scenario-based interviews, household characteristics and depression symptoms. Over 80% of respondents presented with a 'business-asusual forest access' scenario expected reduced access to forest income and food over the next decade; this number climbed above 90% among 'restricted forest access' scenario respondents. Over 99% of those presented with two land access scenarios ('business-as-usual land access' and 'sugarcane expansion land access') expected wealthy households to gain land but poorer families to lose it, threatening to increase poverty and food insecurity among small-scale farmers. Bayesian structural equation modelling suggested that depression severity was positively associated with food insecurity (0.20, 95% CI = 0.12-0.28) and economic poverty (0.11, 95% CI 0.02-0.19). Decision-makers should evaluate the mental health impacts of conservation and agricultural approaches that restrict access to livelihood resources. Future research could explore opportunities to support mental health through sustainable use of nature. The earth's biological diversity is being lost at unprecedented rates, largely driven by habitat degradation, species overexploitation, pollution, invasive species introduction, and climate change 1 . At the same time, many people worldwide continue to face poverty, hunger, illness, and other threats to wellbeing 2 . Looking forward, therefore, humanity faces the joint challenge of enhancing human health and wellbeing while improving the state of nature 3 . Two intersecting global policy frameworks seek to address this joint challenge. The proposed post-2020 global biodiversity framework aims to catalyse "urgent action across society to put biodiversity on a path to recovery for the benefit of planet and people" as a step towards living in harmony with nature by 2050 4 . Simultaneously, the 17 United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) include ending poverty (SDG 1) and hunger (SDG 2) while reducing inequalities (SDG 10) and ensuring health for all (SDG 3) 5 . How landscapes are managed will play a key role in addressing this joint challenge in the coming decades. For example, feeding the world's population whilst protecting nature will require significant changes in how agroecological systems are organised 6 . Often, land management interventions change who has access to nature and its resources, with complex trade-offs and co-benefits in relation to multiple dimensions of wellbeing . A core part of wellbeing is mental health, defined as the capacity of thoughts, emotions, and behaviours that enable people to realise their potential, cope with stresses, work productively, and contribute to their community 9,10 . Poor mental health is a leading threat to wellbeing and a major contributor to the global burden of disease 11 . For instance, mental disorders contributed around 35% of total years lived with disability in 2015, and over 260 million people were estimated to have had depression in 2017 . Yet, evidence of how land management can

International Breastfeeding Journal, 2019

Background Infant formula requires mass production by the dairy industry, with plastic and other waste and degradation of land and waterways. Millions of babies, two thirds globally, now have milk formula, with breastfeeding in dramatic decline in Asia. Economic cost externalities and commercial incentives Economic thinking clarifies that markets are not perfect - price incentives can lead to excessive and inefficient environmental damage. Market prices paid to produce or use a commodity may not reflect its true resource costs. The ongoing global transition in infant and young child feeding (IYCF) toward milk formula use makes urgent the investigation of its environmental costs, including greenhouse gas (GHG) implications. Socially vulnerable populations are also particularly exposed to climate change risks, but have the least voice and agency. The important role of public health advocacy Few question the scale of the baby food industry, especially in major food exporting countries....

Biological Conservation, 2020

Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre -including this research content -immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.

BMJ Open, 2023

Aims Planetary health is a transdisciplinary field that explores the relationship between the escalating climate and environmental crises and human health. In light of the human health cost arising from planetary health issues, there is a need to educate future medical practitioners accordingly. This study investigates the factors influencing the integration of planetary health into undergraduate medical education at an Irish university and makes recommendations for future practice. Methods A qualitative descriptive study design was employed. Twelve semi-structured interviews were conducted with academic staff actively involved in teaching on the undergraduate medical curriculum at

European journal of nutrition, 2020

Malnutrition in an obese world was the fitting title of the 13th Federation of European Nutrition Societies (FENS) conference held in October 2019. Many individuals do not eat a healthy, well-balanced diet, and this is now understood to be a major driver of increased disease risk and illness. Moreover, both our current eating patterns and the food system as a whole are environmentally unsustainable, threatening the planetary systems we depend on for survival. As we attempt to feed a growing global population, food systems will increasingly be confronted with their environmental impacts, with the added challenge of climate change-induced threats to food production. As we move into the third decade of the twenty-first century, these challenges demand that the nutrition research community reconsider its scope, concepts, methods, and societal role. At a pre-meeting workshop held at the FENS conference, over 70 researchers active in the field explored ways to advance the discipline's capacity to address cross-cutting issues of personal, public and planetary health. Using the world cafe method, four themed discussion tables explored (a) the breadth of scientific domains needed to meet the current challenges, (b) the nature and definition of the shifting concepts in nutrition sciences, (c) the next-generation methods required and (d) communication and organisational challenges and opportunities. As a follow-up to earlier work [1], here we report the highlights of the discussions, and propose the next steps to advance responsible research and innovation in the domain of nutritional science.

Journal of The Royal Society of New Zealand, 2019

Colonisation has deeply harmed Maori communities, seriously and consistently undermining their vitality, aspirations and potentials, particularly since the 1860s, at inestimable cost to the entire nation. The British arrival in Aotearoa commenced a relationship between two very different peoples that has profoundly influenced their distinct and collective fortunes ever since. Despite manifest breaches of te Tiriti o Waitangi, this relationship has centred settler interests ensuring that Maori sovereignty has been displaced in favour of colonial hegemony, entrenching longstanding, preventable inequities in health and other important domains of social life. In this paper we trace some broad indicators of relational health and wellbeing in Aotearoa and consider how Maori thinking about whenua, health and wellbeing might lead healing opportunities for people and whenua. We outline ways in which a unified, dynamic, relational Maori concept based on whenua as the determinant of health could contribute. We believe this could expand, strengthen and revitalise prevention, protection and promotion approaches, to counter the injustices of colonisation, contribute toward health equity and move toward just, sustainable shared futures for the benefit of all New Zealanders.

Nonlinear Dynamics, 2022

Controlling many infectious diseases, including SARS-Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2), requires surveillance followed by isolation, contacttracing and quarantining. These interventions often begin by identifying symptomatic individuals. However, actively removing pathogen strains causing symptomatic infections may inadvertently select for strains less likely to cause symptomatic infections. Moreover, a pathogen's fitness landscape is structured around a heterogeneous host pool; uneven surveillance efforts and distinct transmission risks across host classes can meaningfully alter selection pressures. Here, we explore this interplay between evolution caused by disease control efforts and the evolutionary consequences of host heterogeneity. Using an evolution-Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at

Buildings & cities, 2021

Urban areas are highly complex systems, with interconnections between their political, economic, social, natural and built environments components, and each with its own unique priorities and contexts. They are also facing key global and local sustainability challenges such as a changing climate, air pollution and waste, all of which also present risks for population health. Improving urban sustainability can provide co-benefits for population health; however, the effectiveness-or unintended consequences-of policies or actions can depend on the behaviours and relationships in the wider urban system. The papers published in this special issue explore issues related to urban sustainability and health, including urban design and environmental justice, scale, and informal settlements. The papers also describe issues at the interface of different system components, demonstrating the systemic challenges that can act to enhance or prevent sustainable change. The complexity of urban environments presents challenges for research and policy, both of which can be reductive, and conducted independent from other disciplines or government departments. However, by moving from this siloed approach towards a broader systemic understanding, there are opportunities to develop and implement evidence-based solutions that have the potential to lead to significant improvements in sustainability and health.