Welcome to Course 5, planetary health and social determinants of health. This is module 3, planetary health action and movement building and how we begin to really change our lives and take action to address environmental determinants of health. My name is Dr. Teddie Potter, I'm a Clinical Professor at the School of Nursing at the University of Minnesota where I coordinate the Doctor of Nursing Practice in Health Innovation and Leadership and I'm director of planetary health, so welcome. We're going to begin with a recap of our two previous modules. Module 1, exposed you to the emerging field, paradigm and movement of planetary health. We did an overview of how planetary health was developed, its original roots with indigenous people, and how the science of planetary health is growing. In module 2, we looked at sources of data. We talked about the Earth's boundaries, we talked about what exceeding those boundaries is doing as far as disrupting Earth's natural systems, and we talked about the human health impacts of human cause disruptions of the Earth's natural systems and that is by definition, what planetary health is about. Humans have begun to disrupt the Earth's natural systems in large enough and significant enough ways that geologists have now termed this current geological era of our planet, the Anthropocene. Human cause disruptions of the Earth's natural systems and these disruptions are putting the health of humans and all life on the planet, plants, animals, etc, at risk, which we must address. We have enough data showing that the problems are occurring and they're happening now and the time is urgent and we must take action. We also want to pivot towards there's hope, because we know what needs to be done. It's a matter of our will. We know that massive correction needs to be taken globally and we know how to do that, we know how to work together, we know that systems thinking is important, and we know that it's important to work across disciplines or transdisciplinary in order to have an impact. This module, module 3, focuses on taking action, how we build a movement. There will be further modules within this course that will be talking about the importance of futures thinking, and how we begin to not just look to the past, but also look to the future to guide our behaviors and how we respond as human species. But for now we're going to talk about human movement building and how we put in place corrective measures to improve the health of the planet. The objectives for this module are to examine data related to evidence-based planetary health solutions, to reflect on examples that exists of planetary health movement building, and to finally develop a personal plan of action for our own participation in restoration of planetary health. Again, we look back at our old familiar model to recap, we started with planetary health as a foundational concept. It's not possible to have global human health or health of animals if we allow the earth to be destroyed. We have to have the health of the Earth, health of the planet and natural systems in order for humans to survive and thrive. It's a grounding principle when we talk about social determinants of health, the environmental determinants of health are both local, perhaps the environment right around where we live or in our communities, but they are also planetary and I'm at the biggest scale possible. We have to be addressing the issues such as water, air, ocean integrity, our land integrity, our forest, if we have a chance to survive. We then approached it from a data perspective of there is plenty of science that indicates we are disrupting the Earth's natural systems and that these disruptions caused by humans are having direct impacts on the health of humans and all other species on the planet. We showed that this is planetary health is an emerging field, there's data to represent the field, and we now are calling everybody into action. What can we do? We know that we are living on the brink of creating an environment which will not be habitat for the human species. What do we do about it? This module is about transformation. In preparation for part 1, I would like you to watch the video draw-down, is it possible to reverse global warming? I'd like you to read the article, improving rural health care reduces illegal logging and conserves carbon and tropical forests. Finally, I'd like you to close with the video, which is a TEDx presentation by Kinari Webb, which talks about saving lives by saving trees, and the interconnection of actions that improve the health of the plant actually do improve the health of humans. This is in preparation for part 1.
