Planetary Health: A New Paradigm for the Era of COVID-19 and Climate Change

Last May 5, 2022, John Clements Consultants (JC) hosted a webinar, entitled “Planetary Health: A New Paradigm for the Era of Covid-19 and Climate Change”—the fourth episode of the six-part Weekly with JC, an HR Leadership series organized by the company.

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Invited as speaker was Dr. Renzo Guinto, MD DrPH—Chief Planetary Health Scientist and Co-Founder of the newly established Sunway Centre for Planetary Health in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Concurrently, he is an Associate Professor of the Practice of Global Public Health and Inaugural Director of the Planetary and Global Health Program of the St. Luke’s Medical Center College of Medicine in the Philippines. He is also a member of the National Panel of Technical Experts of the Climate Change Commission of the Philippines and convener of Planetary Health Philippines, a community of Filipino scholars and practitioners for advancing the new discipline of planetary health.?

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On the panel were Vanee Gosiengfiao—General Manager of Consumer Healthcare, Sanofi; and Dr. Diana Edralin, MD, DPCOM—General Manager, Roche. The discussion was moderated by Raquel Cagurangan—Head of Ambulatory Care, Metro Pacific Hospitals Holdings.?         

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Allow me to share some of the insights I learned from the presentation of Dr. Guinto.

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Planetary health is the new paradigm that we need for the era of COVID-19 and climate change. Health is not produced inside the medical care system; it is produced outside the walls of the clinic, of the operating theatre, of the hospital. We're now facing an unprecedented level of what we call anthropogenic change—changes that are human-induced, man-made—and these changes we are inflicting on the environment are leading to a wide range of health impacts.

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Over the last two years, we have seen the confluence between the COVID-19 crisis and the climate crisis. While we acknowledge that COVID-19 is a disease, we realize that the planet's health is essential to preventing infectious diseases. We need to make sure that COVID-19 is the last pandemic of its kind. Unfortunately, a very recent study has revealed that climate change, if not averted, could spark the next pandemic.

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The Southeast Asian region, where the Philippines is located, is indeed an infectious disease hotspot and could be the origin of the next pandemic. In fact, the Philippines is currently facing the fastest rate of sea level rise in the world and many cities in the Philippines, including Manila, are at very high risk of being underwater by 2050. These forecasts are very alarming—and these are just for water-related phenomena, like typhoons, flooding, and sea level rise.

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Now that we are working towards recovering from the pandemic, we want to make sure that as we move towards the post-COVID era, we are building a future that is green, healthy, committed to and aligned with planetary health principles. We can only achieve that if we will work together as a society. We cannot just leave everything to the health sector—we need the cooperation of the transport sector, the food sector, the energy sector—all of us should work together towards improving the health of our people and of our planet.

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There have been a lot of discussions about the future of business in the era of planetary health in recent years. From several articles that have emerged over the past two years, there’s one framework that businesses can adopt, which is the Culture of Health Framework that was developed by Professor John Welch, a former professor at the Harvard Business School.

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We need to expand our definition of health as we operationalize it in business. While we make sure that improving the health of our employees is a top priority, we need to go beyond employee health and make sure that our business is contributing to the improvement of the health of our consumers and the community. Our businesses are not operating in isolation and, ultimately, we want our businesses to be part of safeguarding the health of our planet for ourselves and for future generations.

Planetary Health: A New Paradigm for the Era of COVID-19 and Climate Change

by Roger Santos