If you lived in Lahti, Finland, you would probably walk away from your practice with an unusual recommendation: walk barefoot in the woods, tend to your garden or orchard, or perhaps go out to gather wild herbs for dinner, El Pais reports (link in Spanish).
Lahti City Council proposed last summer to its inhabitants to sign up for a pilot study to test the hypothesis that making more “green” decisions has beneficial repercussions for people’s health. Five volunteers answered the call and received personalized health plans, drawn up by Finland’s first female planetary health doctor , Dr. Hanna Haveri.Human and planetary well-being are intimately intertwined, say planetary health researchers
According to planetary health researchers, human and planetary well-being are intimately interrelated: taking care of one necessarily means taking care of the other. In other words, if we work to slow down climate change, we can, by rebound, improve our health. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), almost one in four deaths globally is related to environmental factors such as air pollution, climate and living conditions in cities.
The concept of planetary health was coined at the time by The Lancet and the Rockefeller Foundation . Today, the Planetary Health Alliance brings together more than 300 universities, non-governmental organizations, research centers and state agencies around the world. All of them are dedicated to exploring the relationship between human health and environmental conservation.