Verena Rossa-Roccor, 2019 Planetary Health Campus Ambassador
By Verena Rossa, 2019 Planetary Health Campus Ambassador
When I first heard about the field of planetary health and the Planetary Health Alliance (PHA), I had just moved to Canada after making the decision to leave clinical practice as a psychiatrist in Switzerland and was wondering how in the world I would finally be able to combine my passions for population health and environmental stewardship. When I went to the Inaugural Meeting of the Planetary Health Alliance in 2017 I was immediately inspired by everyone involved. For the first time, I gathered a sense of real passion and drive to create change at a scientific conference! It wasn’t just about the research findings — it was about how we can leverage this knowledge and create change. I especially value the Alliance’s mission to connect collaborators within and beyond the academy.
Fast forward 3 years and I am a PhD student at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver, Canada. I research effective political knowledge-to-action strategies that public health scholars need to employ in order to shape environmental policy. I further bring a planetary health lens to my involvement with food system policy development at UBC where I sit on several committees and co-chair a transdisciplinary working group on climate friendly food system action.
The day I returned to Vancouver from the Inaugural Meeting of the PHA in 2017, I reached out to a few fellow graduate students to form a local Planetary Health Network at UBC. Working in different fields and departments, many students, faculty and staff have been interested in exploring the intersection of human health and anthropogenic changes in natural systems. Due to the interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary nature of the planetary health field, we thought it crucial to create a network which would allow people from different fields to come together and share their knowledge, networks, and experiences. We are now a small but mighty group of 10 graduate students from diverse backgrounds (public health, forestry, biology, geography, urban planning, kinesiology, arts, anthropology) and receive ongoing support from faculty members at the School of Population and Public Health and the Department of Forestry.
Our goals are to:
1. Create a knowledge hub that fosters knowledge sharing and promotes the creation of research collaborations across UBC departments
2. Strengthen the network of researchers, students and staff working on issues within the scope of planetary health
3. Function as liaison to the international consortium of the Planetary Health Alliance of which UBC is to become a member
Our group has been actively engaged in a variety of events during my time as PHA Student Ambassador. We kicked off the year with a meeting with Hon. Keith Martin, MD, PC, Executive Director of the Consortium of Universities for Global Health to discuss the future role of academia in climate action. Dr. Martin encouraged us in our activities and we have found an ally in him in our pursuit to have UBC join the Alliance. We are very grateful for his encouragement and support!
In February, we co-hosted a seminar on a One Health topic that was attended by over 20 people from five different departments and was very well received. The collaboration with the Healthy Cities Network had grown out of previously co-hosted events and is ongoing — a great way to live up to the idea of thinking globally but acting locally.
Throughout the year, we have gained growing attention and have been invited to speak about planetary health on a variety of occasions. I was both a guest lecturer on the topic of planetary health as well as the teaching assistant for an undergraduate course on environmental impacts on human health. When students were asked to comment on their understanding of health at the end of the term, one student put it very poignantly: “All people around the world need to see these systemic connections between environment, climate change, food and other industries, social and economic inequality, human rights (includes people of colour, Indigenous community, queer community…) and animal rights and land, water, and clean energy, drug-use, increased mental health disorders and suicide. IT IS ALL LINKED IN THIS PLANETARY SYSTEM!!!”
We were further invited to table at the 2019 Global Health Café, an event that frequently attracts over one hundred people. By bridging gaps between the departments within the Faculty of Medicine, I was invited to speak to an audience of nurses and nurse researchers; a great summary of our presentation was distributed subsequently and further collaboration with the School of Nursing is an option we are pursuing.
In August, my colleague Federico Andrade and I were invited to host workshops with a focus on planetary health and health equity for the Canadian Consortium of Global Health Research’s second British Columbia Coalition Summer Institute. 28 participants and 15 facilitators came together to better understand the systems approach to health that addresses planetary boundaries and linkages between human well-being and the state of the natural systems on which it depends. A special feature of the event was a dialogue with Elizabeth May, Leader of the Green Party of Canada, about the climate emergency that we are facing, how self-governance and sovereignty are critical to land stewardship, and what we can do as citizens.
In September, three of us travelled to the Annual Meeting of the PHA at Stanford University where we presented our poster on a collaborative scoping review and bibliometric analysis of the term ‘planetary health’ that we had been working on as a group. Our abstract was selected as one of the top submissions and we are currently finishing up the full manuscript for publication. As was our experience in previous years, we returned from the conference beaming, motivated and hopeful. It was definitely the highlight of my year!
Planetary Health Network UBC members Verena Rossa-Roccor, Saori Ogura and Federico Andrade-Rivas presenting our poster at the 2019 Annual Meeting of the Planetary Health Alliance at Stanford University
But we also walk the talk, here are Planetary Health Network UBC members at the UBC Climate Strike:
I will be finishing up this exciting and busy year with an invitation to join a student-led podcast to speak about my passion for planetary health and how I have found my professional identity in this field. Indeed, I am very grateful to have ‘found my people’ by joining the Planetary Health Alliance. I strongly believe that together, we can and we will make a difference for the health of all beings on this planet. Thank you for the opportunity to carry this message forward,
Verena Rossa-Roccor, MD, MSc
PhD student, University of British Columbia
