4/23/25: Cross-Disciplinary Education Gathering Recap

On April 23rd, the Johns Hopkins Institute for Planetary Health hosted a Cross-Disciplinary Planetary Health Education Gathering aimed at strengthening connections among Johns Hopkins faculty, teaching assistants, JHIPH, and the Planetary Health Alliance, and co-creating strategies for the integration of Planetary Health into JHU courses. Attendees contributed creative ideas and valuable insights, which have been summarized below.

Group Discussion Notes

Question 1: What kind of support from JHIPH would be most useful to you in embedding Planetary Health into your courses? 

• Develop Planetary Health (PH) competencies tailored to specific teaching fields 
• Create a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) to expand reach beyond JHU 
• Reference model courses (e.g., What is Happiness? from Yale) 
• Build a searchable database of guest speakers, current Planetary Health courses, and other resources 
• Offer “curbside counseling” (consulting-style support) 
• Encourage co-teaching (e.g., with community partners, Morgan State, UB), while understanding potential barriers that may need to be addressed 
• Facilitate informal networking like “coffee with colleagues” 
• Host open “office hour” in-person and virtual spaces for collaboration 
• Help build faculty confidence and comfort in teaching Planetary Health 
• Promote service-learning as a teaching model 

Question 2: What is the most effective framing of Planetary Health to engage the JHU community? 

• Highlight connections between global environmental change and human health as a short-term goal 
• Collaborate with the Office of Climate and Sustainability on the Climate Action & Sustainability Plan; reinforce shared language
• Talk about PH values early and clearly:
  • During student orientation
  • During faculty & staff on-boarding 
  • During annual reviews  
• Make cross-registration for courses across JHU more accessible
• Strengthen academic advising to support PH-related course selection 
• Add a 7th “Foundational Ability” for undergrads focused on PH (currently 6 exist) 
• Use Program of Study tagging in the course catalog to surface PH-related content 
• Launch a broader PH awareness campaign that doesn’t lead explicitly with “Planetary Health.” (e.g., taglines such as “Our Planet, Our Health) 

Question 3: How do we change culture through Planetary Health education at Hopkins? 

• Start conversations with broad, relatable questions (e.g., “What makes a city livable?”)
• Create shared co-working or convening spaces

Main Themes

• Marketing / ad campaign (orientation, onboarding, annual review) 
• Space to convene / community of practice (coffee, office hours, co-teaching ops) 
• Making PH more visible in the course catalog (Foundational Abilities, tagging, registration ease) 
• Other tool ideas (speaker database, field-specific competencies, service-learning integration)  

Planetary Health Education Resources

The Planetary Health Alliance offers various resources for educators. The three foundational resources include:  

• The Planetary Health Education Framework, which provides a shared global language and guidelines for diverse global education approaches. 
• Sao Paulo Declaration on Planetary Health, which provides a shared global vision. 
• The Planetary Health Roadmap and Action Plan,  which provides a shared global strategy for actualizing the vision of the Sao Paulo Declaration.  

For resources specifically tailored to educators, visit the Planetary Health Alliance educator section.