Patient-Planetary Health Co-benefit Prescribing: Emerging Considerations for Health Policy and Health Professional Practice.

Nicole Redvers

doi:10.3389/fpubh.2021.678545

Nicole Redvers

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2021.678545

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Abstract

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 and public health practice has been proposed with the potential to bring forth dialogue between and within disciplinary offshoots and public health advocacy efforts, and within clinical and health-system policy spaces.

Highlights

Planetary health is a field focused on characterizing the linkages between human-caused disruptions of Earth’s natural systems and the resulting impacts on public health [1]
The field of planetary health aims to develop and evaluate evidence-based solutions to safeguard an equitable, sustainable, and healthy world [2]. This aim is platformed on a sense of urgency underscored in a recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) special report outlining the need to make drastic cuts in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 in order to prevent temperature rises exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels [3]
The contributions toward an action-orientated road map to net zero greenhouse gas emissions within healthcare needs to align with current planetary health and sustainability targets globally

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Planetary health is a field focused on characterizing the linkages between human-caused disruptions of Earth’s natural systems (e.g., climate change, deforestation, pollution) and the resulting impacts on public health [1]. Behavioral systems approaches that take into account individual and policy level drivers [45] may be applicable and potentially leveraged in the process of further developing clinical and public health practice guidelines given the importance of clinician behavior change in any implementation process [45, 46] Notwithstanding, this proposed effort and dialogue attempts to break down traditional public health and healthcare silos, including within many current environmental healthcare sustainability spaces, which have historically and contemporarily minimized the voices and knowledge systems of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) communities. Moving forward “in a good way” [58] will require the elevation and amplification of Indigenous voices within healthcare spaces, including within planetary health and sustainability spaces [41]

CONCLUSION

DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT

IPCC Special Report