Current models of industrialization and consumption are eroding biodiversity, degrading the environment, and impacting the ability of ecosystems to support human communities. Climate change and other environmental challenges are creating a health crisis of planetary dimension, with impacts falling disproportionately on vulnerable and historically marginalized populations.
Comprehensively understanding the linkages between the environment and human health allows us to design policies and systems that account for the true costs of environmental degradation and conservation.
More than 70 Stanford scholars are collaborating through the Healthy Planet, Healthy People (HPHP) working group to expand the field of human and planetary health scholarship, bringing together perspectives from environmental sciences, public health, systems thinking, and other disciplines to achieve breakthroughs and find solutions.
Interested in taking HPHP courses? See current offerings.
With support from Stanford’s Center for Innovation and Global Health and the Woods Institute for the Environment, the working group reaches across the university and beyond to investigate and address these interdependencies to create and preserve a livable future. Areas of focus include:
- Climate & health: Using climate science to protect communities against extreme weather, wildfires, and other impacts of climate change.
- Pollution & health: Envisioning restructured industries that manage ocean, land, and air pollution, support health, and build resilient economies.
- Ecology & infectious disease: Creating solutions that protect and restore ecosystems to reduce emergence of disease-causing pathogens.
- Food, health & the environment: Developing food systems that support livelihoods, mitigate climate change, and promote health – on land and at sea.
Learn more at: https://globalhealth.stanford.edu/human-and-planetary-health/
