The rising impact of environmental changes on human health has become ever clearer in recent years, with numerous dangers stemming from climate change and ecosystem degradation. The recent Ebola outbreak is but one fearsome example. The dangers range from pollution and ozone depletion, to declining freshwater resources, to ocean acidification and the loss of biodiversity. These trends are not only causing changing patterns of known diseases and health threats. They are raising the likelihood that new, unknown diseases will emerge – Ebola was identified in 1976. MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) has turned up in the Middle East only a few years ago – and that public health challenges will only increase with continued environmental decline.
Scientists and policy makers are calling for deeper and broader research on the interactions between human health and the rapidly changing planetary environment. As a result, there is a rising awareness that tackling these challenges may require radical new approaches, new ways of thinking and an entirely new discipline.
Why call for a new field of study and action? From the field of “medicine” to the evolution over the past century of “public health,” and onward to the more recent conceptions of “international health” and “global health,” each shift from one conceptual framework to another has sparked fundamental changes in the way the world takes on its most pressing health challenges. In the last century, for example, the creation of the modern field of public health, to which the Rockefeller Foundation’s first initiative contributed, in 1913, involved huge changes in public policy, the creation of new government agencies and programs, transformations in training, and radical changes in public expectations.
These shifts were driven in large part by industrialization, urbanization and eventually globalization, with each mass trend triggering new kinds of threats to the health of individuals and communities. Now, with massive environmental changes underway with important local to planetary implications the time is right to revisit how we think about human health and how we organize our efforts to support it.
To consider these questions and address the global public health challenge posed by dramatic environmental change, The Rockefeller Foundation and British medical journal The Lancet co-convened a Commission on Planetary Health, which was launched at a meeting at the Foundation’s Bellagio Conference Center in Italy in July 2014. More than 30 high-level participants, including scientists, entrepreneurs, public health experts, business executives and government leaders met to better understand planetary system disturbances, and to explore possible solutions to future threats. Insights from this meeting are captured in this Visionaries Unbound report and will be further explored in more detail in the Planetary Health Commission report, expected in mid-2015.
A guest blog from Fred Boltz, Managing Director for Ecosystems and Claudia Juech, Associate Vice President and Managing Director of Strategic Research, at the Rockefeller Foundation.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Economist Intelligence Unit Limited (EIU) or any other member of The Economist Group. The Economist Group (including the EIU) cannot accept any responsibility or liability for reliance by any person on this article or any of the information, opinions or conclusions set out in the article.
