Planetary Health

Abstract

This paper is an exercise in integrative thinking. Accepting the perilous decline of the environment as a given, and accepting the growing evidence of serious damage to human health, Planetary Health suggests a philosophy of environmental health that implies deep societal and educational change. It presents a conceptual framework for understanding human health as a dynamic condition of sustainability arising from successful integration of ecological sub–systems, of which the human species is but one. Human health and planetary health are fundamentally inseparable. The environment is the primary health care delivery system: the disruption of the environment threatens us with a health crises beyond our experience. As a species priority, we need a vision of how to sustain the planetary health care system. What are the broadest contextual determinants of individual and societal health? What are the behavioral implications of profound interdependence? Planetary Health attempts to synthesize multiple aspects of human health - physical, economic, behavioral, and cognitive into a vision of human sustainability. It proposes the phenomenon of human health as one aspect of a unifying ecological principle. It proposes this reality as the appropriate foundation of educational and social policy.