Protecting Our World to Protect Ourselves

press release: Professor Howard Frumkin, M.D., DrPH, an expert on the intersection between public health and the built environment, climate change, energy policy, and nature contact, will keynote an evening that defines planetary health and how the concept can be used to find a way forward for humans and the planet. The field of planetary health has emerged in recent years, based on the notion that transgressing planetary limits—a hallmark of the now-defined Anthropocene Epoch that acknowledges human impact on the planet—is incompatible with continued human thriving.

Planetary Health recognizes safeguarding human health requires maintaining the health of the planet on which life depends. Frumkin, a professor of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences and former Dean of the School of Public Health at the University of Washington School of Medicine and former director of the National Center for Environmental Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Preventing, will trace the evolution of field of Planetary Health, explore how a variety of planetary changes may threaten human health, and outline some strategies that blend environmental stewardship with public health, on a global scale. Panelists representing UW-Madison’s environmental, medial and social sciences will respond to Frumkin’s talk.