These are challenging times, with both the planet and our societies are at risk, demanding urgent, structural transformations. CO2 emissions continue to rise - in Catalonia alone, they've risen by 3.1% compared to pre-pandemic levels. Meanwhile, approximately 5,200 species teeter on the brink of extinction, climate migrations affect over 20 million people yearly, and extreme weather events grow in frequency and severity. These phenomena directly impact human health, exacting a disproportionately harsh toll on the most vulnerable populations. Ensuring a viable future on planet Earth requires respecting its environmental limits, but, more importantly, it demands addressing inequalities, championing social justice, and ensuring equitable healthcare access.

The climate emergency is more than a serious environmental, social, and political crisis; it is also a health and public health challenge. However, it is not a new crisis nor one beyond prevention. Since 1990, each report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations body responsible for assessing and forecasting the effects of climate change, has consistently sounded the alarm about the rising frequency and intensity of extreme weather events. Global warming is currently the foremost threat to human health. Moreover, we’re acutely aware that climate change will evolve into the next major public health crisis in the years ahead. Some have already suggested that the current climate and environmental crisis meets the criteria for the World Health Organization (WHO) to declare an international public health emergency, akin to their reponse to the COVID-19 pandemic (Benavides, 2024). Such is the complexity, uncertainty, and urgency of the situation.

The COVID-19 pandemic starkly illustrated the intimate connection between planetary health and the emergence of potentially devastating diseases (Antó, 2023). Even so, we’ve failed to fully embrace a shift toward a more sustainable (and healthy) socio-economic model. Astonishingly, the climate crisis remains inadequately integrated into the public health agenda, squandering a unique opportunity for its establishment and fortification as a discipline.

In education, global initiatives have persistently urged universities to incorporate planetary health concepts throughout the curricula, especially within the health sciences. In 2018, Pompeu Fabra University pioneered the Planetary Wellbeing project, aiming to deepen understanding of human, animal, and planetary well-being issues and devise innovative, interdisciplinary solutions. Despite these endeavors, postgraduate education on a global scale has largely neglected the integration of planetary health into academic curricula.

Most postgraduate public health programs have yet to systematically incorporate the climate and environmental crisis. Furthermore, there’s a lack of standardization and guidance on the skills, competencies, and knowledge needed by public health professionals to address the new challenges arising from the climate crisis (ASPPH, 2022). Likewise, there is no unified framework on integrating climate change and health into existing programs. Nevertheless, preparing students to grasp and tackle complex issues to propel us toward more sustainable societies is a crucial and burgeoning challenge for higher education institutions (Carrió, 2023).

In 2020, within the Master's in Public Health program at UPF-UAB, we took a proactive step by establishing a working group dedicated to integrating the climate and environmental crisis into our educational programs. As a first step, we introduced a new elective course on Planetary Health, which has been well-received by students, encouraging us to push forward with the initiative. Currently, with a more ambitious vision, our goal is to incorporate planetary health as a new transdisciplinary approach, that will complement the other two main axes of the program: the social determinants of health and advanced research methodology. Our intervention focuses on equipping faculty with training and support, organizing seminars, practical workshops, and compiling a guide with specific resources. The results, assessed through a pilot test conducted in five courses, are encouraging, with most courses introducing new planetary health concepts through a variety of educational approaches such as debates, practical exercises, and group work.

Our experience underscores the feasibility of incorporating planetary health throughout a master's program in public health. It also emphasizes the need for human and financial resources, as well as institutional backing to achieve this goal. Institutional support is not a minor issue in the field of postgraduate education in public health. Currently, postgraduate programs act as a gateway for individuals embarking on public health careers in Spain, fostering shared learning among graduates from diverse disciplines and preparing them for the multidisciplinary tasks inherent in public health practice. However, because of the absence of a foundational degree, most faculty members do not teach full-time and require greater support and guidance when implementing curriculum changes. This support includes financial resources and organizational structures that endorse and champion projects believed to be essential to enhance both human and planetary well-being.

The Planetary Wellbeing initiative at Pompeu Fabra University is an excellent example of institutional commitment to tackling global challenges through small-scale actions in higher education. The hurdles of implementing integrated and innovative solutions emphasize the importance of motivation, creativity and imagination, as well as interdisciplinary collaboration among traditionally fragmented and compartmentalized disciplines. While our intervention is small-scale and focuses on faculty training and resource provision, there is potential for its expansion univeristy-wide. Scaling up this approach could have an exponential impact on the education of future professionals in various disciplines, including economics, social sciences, communication, and biomedicine. This approach helps to enhance higher education mechanisms, steering them toward more ambitious models in the belief that they can drive change and create a better world.

As we navigate this journey, public health and planetary health must necessarily go hand in hand. Embedding planetary health in public health training programs is a complex but necessary endeavor, aiming to enhance the ability of future public health professionals to comprehend and grapple with complex issues. This will help us progress toward healthier and more sustainable societies. Public health training programs have the chance to play a proactive role in ushering in a new era of public health—one that is more empowered, assertive, and able to influence governmental policies, thus positioning itself at the forefront of political discourse. The responsibility lies with us, the countdown will not wait.

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Note: This reflection is based on the final master’s thesis that Mireia Llimós conducted within the Master in Planetary Health (UOC-ISGlobal-UPF). Mireia won the second prize for the Best Master’s Thesis in Planetary Wellbeing with their thesis “Planetary health as a transversal axis in the subjects of the master's degree in Public Health UPF-UAB: intervention design modality.”. You can access the complete thesis here.

[Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this blog are solely those of the individual collaborators and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of our University or any organisation we may be affiliated with]