Planetary Health 2018
A side session proposing environmental public health tracking at global level was organised as part of the 2018 Planetary Health Annual Meeting that took place on Tuesday, May 29 to Thursday, May 31, with side sessions/living labs on June 1st.
Development of “Planetary Health Watch”: Towards an integrated system to monitor health and global environmental changes
Side session held at 8:30am-12:00pm Friday, June 1, University of Edinburgh
There is a need to bring together various efforts which aim to monitor
and track trends in relevant health, environmental and other indicators that reflect different aspects of Planetary Health in order to assess progress, facilitate early warning of impending threats to health, and assess the effects of adaptation and mitigation policies. Such an initiative would focus on building sustainable capacity in vulnerable countries and regions. Sites in high and middle income countries would also be an essential part of the collaborative network particularly to demonstrate the feasibility of decarbonising their economies and the health (co) benefits of doing so as well as the effectiveness of integrated adaptation/mitigation strategies.
Planetary Health monitoring should capitalise on the use innovative of approaches such as linking remote sensing and population based data or analysis of big data which would be key components of a ‘Planetary Health Watch’ approach. There is now an opportunity to integrate a range of efforts and platforms to foster a transdisciplinary collaborative approach, coordinating data collection across key environmental drivers, exposures, health outcomes and policy using consistent approaches and metrics. In this way decision makers can be held accountable for decisions across a range of policies and sectors necessary to advance Planetary Health and gaps in evidence and policy can be identified. This session will explore the range of issues related to using environment and health data to monitor on the Planetary level, as well as provide real examples of ongoing resources and research.
Agenda
8:30-10 am – short talks 10 min (not including questions) Moderator: Prof Lora Fleming
● Overview – Prof Andy Haines (LSHTM)
● Global Environmental Tracking – Prof Giovanni Leonardi (PHE)
● Environmental Databases – Prof Rosa Barciela (Met Office)
● Database of Potential Indicators – Dr Peninah (Penny) Murage
● Global Pollution Observatory – Prof Phil Landrigan
● Lancet CountDown- Dr Kris Murray
● Ethics/Sociology of big data –Prof Lora Fleming
10:15-10:45 — Panel Discussion by all Speakers above [Moderator: Ms Harriet Gordon Brown]
Questions: what major environmental drivers, health outcomes need to measure? How measure indirect impacts and what are these impacts? What are the data sources and gaps? What structures are needed (including partnerships)? What are the methods and technical and innovation issues? what are the potential legal, ethical obligations/ethics? How do we do
capacity building in this area? Stories and examples from real life
10:45-11:30 – Small group discussions around 3 themes; the groups will focus on one theme and pick another theme if time allows, with brief high level feedback in last session by Prof Haines
1. Organisation and governance [Lead: Ms Harriet Gordon Brown]
2. What are the data gaps and sources [Lead: Ms Kristine Belesova]
3. Criteria for indicator selection [Lead: Ms HyunJu Lee]
11:30-noon – where do we go from here? What key steps? [Moderator: Prof Andy Haines]