Planetary Health Report Card grades medical schools on green awareness
“As medical students, we’re learning everyday how to keep people healthy, and that means keeping our planet healthy too,” Hampshire says. “Through international collaboration, we, the next generation of healthcare professionals, are catalyzing a greener future.”
Editor’s note: this story is based on original content by the PHRC
The Planetary Health Report Card Initiative (PHRC) recently released its 2022-2023 summary report, which evaluates planetary health awareness and accountability among medical schools globally.
Karly Hampshire co-founded the PHRC in 2019. “Our community has grown from four passionate students in San Francisco, to over 300 medical students in different countries,” she says. The PHRC now evaluates over 100 medical schools in 11 nations, with the fourth annual cycle of evaluation published in April, 2023.
The PHRC is a metric-based tool for evaluating and improving planetary health content in health professional schools. At each participating institution, student-led, faculty-mentored teams fill out the report card, identifying opportunities for improvement and reaching out to relevant staff and faculty along the way. Results are published in an annual Earth Day report, which helps track institutional change over time.
The reports provide a vital needs assessment tool, driving the development of planetary health curricula, expanding research efforts, stimulating engagement with local communities, encouraging support of student-led initiatives, and identifying campus sustainability strengths and weaknesses.
As medical students, we’re learning everyday how to keep people healthy, and that means keeping our planet healthy too. Through international collaboration, we, the next generation of healthcare professionals, are catalyzing a greener future.
Karly Hampshire
Read the 2023 summary report and learn more about the PHRC here.
