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MINI REVIEW article

Front. Public Health
Sec. Planetary Health
Volume 12 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2024.1454729
This article is part of the Research Topic Health Professions Education at a Time of Triple Planetary Crises View all articles

Bridging disciplines-key to success when implementing Planetary Health in medical training curricula

Provisionally accepted
Ebba Malmqvist Ebba Malmqvist *Anna Oudin Anna Oudin
  • Lund University, Lund, Sweden

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Planetary health is being or should be added to medical training curricula in accordance with association consensus. Several articles published in recent years have addressed concern on the implementation, and the challenges that can occur if not addressed properly. This scoping narrative literature review focuses on planetary health as a concept, as well as challenges and suggested solutions to address these challenges. Planetary health is an important concept and needs to be addressed in all medical training. We found that one main challenge is implementation without ensuring the right competences and resources. Medically trained teachers set out to understand and teach complex natural and social systems. At some institutions the time allocated to teach planetary health is limited or nonexistent. Case studies and student led teaching are solutions suggested, while other argue that true interdisciplinarity by inviting experts are more in line with what we expect from other subjects.In conclusion, the roots of planetary health, the enormous health risks at stake and nature of the subject requires medical training to adopt a true inter/trans-disciplinary approach to succeed. It might not be expected for all students to become planetary health experts, but all need a general understanding of the most important aspects and values.

    Keywords: planetary health1, One Health2, Medical training3, medical curriculum4, Climate Change5

    Received: 25 Jun 2024; Accepted: 29 Jul 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Malmqvist and Oudin. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Ebba Malmqvist, Lund University, Lund, Sweden

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.