Initiatives promoting planetary health education in Germany: An overview

Abstract

Planetary health education focuses on the climate and ecological crises and their adverse health effects. Given the acceleration of these crises, nationwide integration of planetary health education into undergraduate and graduate education, postgraduate training and continuing education for all health professionals has repeatedly been called for. Since 2019, planetary health education has been promoted by several national initiatives in Germany that are summarized in this commentary:1. National Working Group Planetary Health Education,2. Manual for planetary health education,3. Catalog of National Planetary Health Learning Objectives in the National Competency-Based Catalog of Learning Objectives for Medical Education,4. Working Group Climate, Environment and Health Impact Assessment at the Institute for Medical and Pharmaceutical Examinations,5. Planetary Health Report Card, and6. PlanetMedEd study: planetary health education in medical schools in Germany.We hope these initiatives promote collaboration across institutions involved in educating and training health professionals, inter-professional cooperation as well as rapid implementation of planetary health education.

Keywords

• planetary health
• planetary health education
• climate change
• sustainable healthcare
• transformative education