UVM Introduces the Planetary Health Initiative

Consider your breath. In that inrush of air, you bring oxygen to your lungs, keeping you alive. It’s the same air that covers the whole planet—oxygen produced by green life. The intricate interplay that we call the environment is not scenery; it’s the fundamental health care system.

During two sessions this spring, leaders, faculty, staff, and students from across UVM’s campus gathered to ponder the meaning of “planetary health”—and to set the stage for a bold university-wide effort called the UVM Planetary Health Initiative.

“Human well-being is inextricably linked with the health of the environment,” said UVM Provost and Senior Vice President Patty Prelock to more than a hundred people gathered in the Davis Center on April 22 for a public event, "For People and Planet: Shaping Planetary Health at UVM." The session invited the university community to consider how UVM’s distinguished contributions in addressing environmental, health, and social justice challenges could be gathered and strengthened under the banner of planetary health.

The overall goal of this new effort, led by the Provost’s Office and numerous campus partners: position the university to be both a global and rural leader in this rapidly expanding field.

This gathering followed a lecture, “This is Planetary Health,” on April 19, by Tom Gillespie (at right), an expert on infectious disease and planetary health, chair of the Department of Environmental Sciences at Emory University, and co-director of the Gombe Ecosystem Health Project in Tanzania. “As our populations increase, now at 8 billion, our continued health and existence as a species depends on a healthy natural ecosystem and the interdependent web of life that comprises these ecosystems,” Gillespie told the assembled audience of deans and senior faculty from across many UVM colleges and schools. His own work in emerging infectious diseases in tropical regions provided powerful examples of how the intersection of wildlife, land use change, human population growth, climate stress, and inadequate medical care place the health of people across the planet— and the planet itself—at growing risk.

“We have exceeded global capacities,” Gillespie said, and are in a “process of acceleration in the ways we are using resources—unsustainable ways.” He noted UVM’s excellent positioning and expertise to expand its leadership in global health; the new initiative emerges from the university’s strong culture of interdisciplinary research and teaching in ecosystem science, sustainable agriculture, ecological economics, complex systems, behavioral medicine, environmental thought, and many other disciplines.

The planetary health approach is “understanding the linkages between humancaused disruption of Earth’s natural systems and resulting impacts on public health," Gillespie said. “Everyone in the room has capacity to contribute to this in some way.”

The formal launch of the new initiative will take place on campus in October as part of a summit convened by UVM’s Osher Center for Integrative Health.