Professional Responsibilities for Planetary Health Stewardship

Abstract

In a sociopolitical environment that challenges progress in addressing climate change, physicians should play a central role in accelerating activities related to climate action, environmental sustainability, and resilience. For instance, stewardship as a physician's professional responsibility should include proactive and consistent planetary health stewardship versus a solely reactive and intermittent response to the increasing intensity and frequency of climate-related catastrophic events. We define planetary health stewardship as optimizing physician decision-making to include considerations around the interdependent relationship between human health and the environment, recognizing the need for physicians and their professional societies to address social, economic, and environmental factors that impact human well-being. Its implementation requires physicians to be equipped with the knowledge, skills, and competencies of planetary health stewardship, a culture that enables more holistic consideration of health and its relationship to the natural environment, and supportive systems. Physicians should work with their professional societies to contextualize policies, guidelines, and recommendations within planetary health stewardship and help realize its associated co-benefits, such as higher quality of care, waste reduction, financial savings, efficiency, and improved outcomes. Because general internists often transcend the domains of comprehensive whole-person care, education, research, and policy, they are well-positioned to become active advocates and role models to accelerate the transformation of healthcare systems through planetary health stewardship.