UC Davis

Understanding and responding to adverse human health impacts of global environmental change will be a major priority of 21st century public health professionals. The emerging field of planetary health aims to face this challenge by studying and promoting policies that protect the health of humans and of the Earths natural systems that support them. Public health, drawing on its experience of guiding policies to improve population health, has contributed to planetary healths development. Yet, few public health practitioners are familiar with planetary healths systems-oriented approaches for understanding relationships between economic development, environmental degradation, and human health. In this narrative review, we present key planetary health concepts and show how systems thinking has guided its development. We discuss historical approaches to studying impacts of economic development on human health and the environment. We then review novel conceptual frameworks adopted by planetary health scientists to study and forecast impacts of policies that influence human health and Earths natural systems at varying spatiotemporal scales. We conclude by presenting examples of how applying the Doughnut model (an economic framework where the needs of people are met without overshooting the worlds ecological limits) could guide policies for promoting health co-benefits to humans and natural systems.