The Planetary Health Report Card: a student-led initiative to inspire planetary health in medical schools

Abstract

Summary: The warming of our planet and destruction of our ecosystems have created grave new threats to human health, such as food insecurity, physical and mental trauma from extreme weather events, and heat-related illness. In the 21st century, medical schools should be training physicians who, as researchers, can advance evidence-based linkages between environment and health; who, as clinicians, can recognise, prevent, and treat associated diseases; and who, as healers, can advocate for a healthy biosphere as an indelible precondition for a healthy humanity. To address the substantial gap between existing and needed curricular content that reflects the realities of the health impacts of environmental degradation, medical students have developed the Planetary Health Report Card (PHRC), a metric-based tool for evaluating and improving planetary health content in medical schools. The PHRC spans five topic areas—curriculum, research, community outreach and advocacy, support for student-led initiatives, and sustainability. Since its creation in 2019, the PHRC has expanded rapidly to evaluate more than 60 medical schools in five countries. Although evaluation results reveal inadequate engagement in all topic areas, application of the PHRC is already spawning transformative dialogue between students, faculty, and administrators, serving as a platform to advance the curricular innovations that will hopefully fulfil the learning needs of medical students in a rapidly changing world.