Planetary Health Network

What is Planetary Health?

Over the past few months, we have held the first two Gloucestershire Planetary Health Network events at the University of Gloucestershire, exploring Healthy Housing in a Changing Climate and Living with Extreme Heat.

Planetary health is an emerging field that explores the connections between human health and the natural systems we depend on. It recognises that many of today’s most pressing health challenges are shaped by environmental change, social inequality, housing, infrastructure, and the ways 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?

Our first event, Healthy Housing in a Changing Climate, focused on how environmental health begins close to home: in the air we breathe indoors, the temperature of our rooms, damp, mould, noise, light, affordability, design, and the wider systems that shape where and how people live. We heard from Tariq Umar on why housing is central to planetary health, Maria Meredith on housing, life, and climate risk in Metro Manila, and Lucy McFadzean and Louise King on the work of Transforming Homes.

Our second event, Living with Extreme Heat, explored how rising temperatures are becoming an urgent issue for health, inequality, housing, infrastructure, disability, and everyday life. Councillor Martin Fodor spoke about Bristol’s work on climate resilience, heat vulnerability, cool spaces, and local action, while Hollye Kirkcaldy shared her PhD research on disability and extreme heat in the UK, highlighting how heat vulnerability is often produced by social and structural conditions rather than by individual risk alone.

Our aim with The Gloucestershire Planetary Health Network is to create and provide a space where research, practice, and lived experience can come together. The aim is to spark collaborations and practical research ideas that are locally relevant but connected to much larger global challenges.

Thank you to all of our speakers and to everyone who came along, asked questions, shared ideas, and continued the conversations afterwards.

I may try to run further events next semester. More details to follow if plans come together.