Planetary Health Network

What is Planetary Health?

Planetary health is an emerging field that explores the connections between human health and the state of the natural systems we depend on. It recognises that many of today’s most pressing health challenges are shaped by environmental change, social inequality, and the way we design our societies. Rather than treating health and the environment as separate issues, planetary health asks a simple but powerful question:

How can we protect and improve human health while also safeguarding the planet’s life-support systems?

The Gloucestershire Planetary Health Network was created to provide a space where research, practice, and lived experience can come together. Each evening focuses on a single theme and brings together three perspectives:
• an early-career academic sharing emerging research
• a local organisation or community group working directly with these challenges
• a senior academic offering wider context and synthesis

By placing these voices side-by-side (and then going to the pub), the series aims to spark collaborations, and practical research ideas that are applicable locally but connected to the growing global challenge.

The events are open to students, researchers, health professionals, local organisations, and members of the public. At its heart, the series is about learning together and exploring how planetary-health thinking can help inform more equitable, resilient, and healthy futures for Gloucestershire and beyond.