A new initiative investigates how environmental changes impact human health.
In January, Dean of Medicine and Biological Sciences Mukesh K. Jain, MD, announced the launch of the Division of Biology and Medicine’s Planetary Health Initiative.
The PHI advances the Division’s mission, Jain wrote in an email to the community, “by fostering research, education, clinical efforts, and community engagement focused on the health implications of human-caused environmental change.” Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine Kyle Denison Martin F’19, DO, MPH, and Senior Associate Dean of Biology Education and Associate Professor of Medical Science Kate F. Smith, PhD, are co-directors of the initiative.
Planetary health—according to the Planetary Health Alliance, of which BioMed is now a member—is a transdisciplinary field and social movement focused on analyzing and addressing the impacts of destabilized natural systems on human health and all life on Earth. Planetary health is centered in medical science, but there is no ignoring the vast changes to environmental systems external to the human body that improve or harm health. Global environments are being altered by pollution, land-use changes, the introduction of invasive species, ocean acidification, warming, desertification, and sea level rise. These changes have dire consequences for humans ranging from the rise of infectious and non-communicable diseases to food insecurity, displacement, and resource scarcity.
“Addressing these challenges requires the interworking of basic and clinical scientists to discover and mitigate human health threats,” Smith says. “With an organizational structure encompassing the Program in Biology and The Warren Alpert Medical School and a mission to improve the health of the planet, BioMed is uniquely positioned to tackle these issues.”
One goal of PHI is to foster a biomedical community where students, scientists, educators, and clinicians work together to learn and address the health challenges of the 21st century. Issues they are tackling include emergency medicine resilience and preparedness during extreme weather events; environmental drivers of emerging infectious disease; and climate change effects on plants and food system resilience.
The planetary health movement at Brown was largely initiated by medical students and has, to date, resulted in the Medical School adding content on the human health impacts of climate change across its curriculum.
