Abstract

Dr Howard Frumkin, from the University of Washington’s School of Public Health, in the USA, described how human activity over the past 50 to 100 years has helped alter the planet, before explaining how these changes are having a very serious and detrimental effect on human health and wellbeing. He also offered some hope that the health threats we’re facing could be converted into health opportunities, provided the necessary action takes place.

Dr Nick Watts, executive director of the Lancet Countdown, and chair of the NHS Net Zero expert panel, explained how our concept of health has become much broader as we tackle the bigger questions around human, population and planetary health.

And Sonia Roschnik, global climate policy director at Health Care Without Harm (HCWH), placed the environmental and ecological crisis in the context of the ongoing pandemic, describing it as a real wake-up call for the need to change the way things are done.