Weissman N Planetary Health Report Card

views comments

Introduction: The Planetary Health Report Card (PHRC) is a quantitative evaluation of environmental sustainability and best environmental practices at health professional schools. The PHRC was founded in 2019 at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine and was designed as a longitudinal metric to evaluate ongoing improvements in sustainability at health professional schools around the world. It is currently an active project at more than 80 schools in 9 different countries. The University of Cincinnati College of Medicine (UCCOM) joined the PHRC project in 2021 in order to identify areas for improvement in sustainable practices and operations.

Methods: The PHRC evaluates schools in 5 main categories: planetary health curriculum, interdisciplinary research, institutional support, community outreach and advocacy, and campus sustainability. Each of these categories are broken down into numerous questions and topics to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the school in that category. The questions and topics are scored on a numerical scale which add together to yield the final score for that category. Each category has a different total amount of possible points. The emphasis of the PHRC is on curriculum and sustainability, so these categories have the largest point totals at 69 and 31 respectively. The totals for each category are combined to yield an overall grade for the school on a scale of A-F (A is 80-100%, F is 0-19%).

Results: The University of Cincinnati College of Medicine received an overall grade of ‘D’ with 32.9% of the available points. In the curriculum category, the score was 12/69 (F+). In the interdisciplinary research category, the score was 11/18 (C+). In the community outreach and advocacy category, the score was 4/14 (D). In the support for student-led planetary health initiatives category, the score was 5/15 (D). In the campus sustainability category, the score was 11/31 (D+).

Conclusions: The University of Cincinnati College of Medicine has significant shortcomings in all of the major categories assessed by the Planetary Health Report Card. In order to improve the environmental sustainability of the college, and to improve on the awareness and knowledge of graduating physicians in these subject areas, significant strides must be taken in the coming years. Physicians need to have an understanding of how the environment plays a role in the overall health of an individual and the effects that climate change has on disease processes. In order to produce more well-rounded physicians prepared for the issues that climate change will bring, UCCOM must implement curriculum changes to address these topics. There is further work to be done in improving all of the major categories. However, curriculum is one of the most easily correctable categories and the category in which UCCOM scored the lowest

Tags