Climate change and planetary health concentration launches
September 4, 2024 – A new interdisciplinary concentration in climate change and planetary health at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health is aimed at preparing students to deal with the consequences of human-caused changes to the climate and the planet, such as extreme weather, the spread of infectious diseases, and negative impacts on food production.
The hope is that the 10-credit concentration will make it easier for students to navigate studies in climate change and planetary health and strengthen the School’s community of scholars in the nascent field while providing a roadmap for how to create an effective program.
“It is clear that the impacts of harming our planet and climate change are among the greatest public health threats we face,” said Gaurab Basu, director of education and policy for Harvard Chan School’s Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment (Harvard Chan C-CHANGE) and an assistant professor in the Department of Environmental Health, who co-directs the new concentration along with Christopher Golden, associate professor of nutrition and planetary health. “Creating a concentration in climate change and planetary health is an important marker at the School to recognize the fact that this isn’t only an engineering or an entrepreneurial or technological issue, but that health really needs to be at the middle of this conversation.”
He added, “There’s been a real clamoring for this among students and increased interest among faculty to contribute to the knowledge base and to develop solutions.”
“In order to adequately prepare, adapt, and create resilience against these upcoming threats, we are bringing together faculty with different skill sets from across the School to teach in the program,” said Golden. “We are excited to prepare the next generation of leaders to tackle this existential crisis that touches every domain of public health, from infectious disease to noncommunicable disease to mental health to nutrition and beyond.”
The concentration includes four core courses. Golden will teach “An Introduction to Planetary Health” and Basu will teach “Climate Change and Global Health Equity.” The other two—“Climate Change, Health, and Environmental Justice: Focusing on Policy and Solutions” and “Human Health and Global Environmental Change”—will be taught, respectively, by Kari Nadeau, John Rock Professor of Climate and Population Studies and chair of the Department of Environmental Health, and Caleb Dresser, an instructor in the department and director of healthcare solutions for C-CHANGE.
Students in the concentration will be able to choose from among nearly 40 courses from one of two tracks, research methodologies and research translation, and will also have a choice of electives on topics such as societal response to disaster and how the built environment impacts health. Nearly 50 faculty from multiple departments and centers are affiliated with the new concentration.
Hervet Randriamady, a fourth-year PhD student from Madagascar in Population Health Sciences at the Harvard Kenneth C. Griffin School of Arts and Sciences, and Momi Afelin, a student from Hawaii who just earned her MPH and is beginning a PhD, plan to pursue the new concentration at Harvard Chan School. Randriamady is focusing on the intersection of climate change and drought-driven crop failures, and the impacts those have on mental health, and Afelin is looking at the effect of environmental changes on subsistence food practices in Hawaii. Both of them have seen how environmental change has impacted livelihoods and health in their home communities.
Randriamady said that in his country, droughts in farming areas have caused crop failures, and intense winds in fishing communities have sometimes made it too dangerous for fishing boats to go out. These problems—both driven by climate change—have led to uncertainty about livelihoods, food insecurity, and mental health issues, he said.
Noted Afelin, “Where I come from, environmental changes driven by climate change are happening right on our doorsteps, and these changes can impact subsistence practices such as hunting, fishing, and farming. Our communities deserve for us, as researchers, to be fully equipped with tools and knowledge to study these environmental changes and health impacts and to co-develop solutions and policy to address them. I hope this concentration will help prepare me for that.”
Photo: iStock/pcess609
If you are interested in learning more about the concentration, please reach out to Skye Flanigan, programs director at C-CHANGE (flanigan@hsph.harvard.edu).
