WONCA Family Doctor Day “Healthy Planet, Healthy People”.
- a blog by Dr Sean Owens, Co. Louth GP and member of irish Doctors for the Environment.
The theme of the 2024 World Family Doctor Day is “Healthy Planet, Healthy People”.
This is a call for family doctors to align their work and personal lives alongside the natural systems which nourish and sustain us. This is the very definition of planetary health i.e., the health of human civilization and the state of the natural systems on which it depends. It also asks that we move our focus to the wellness and happiness end of the health continuum, upstream from the morbidity and disease that occupies so much of our time and energy. The urgency of this message is not confined to the climate crisis. However, much more work is needed considering we cannot have healthy lifestyles and healthy careers without a healthy planet.
Much of the disease that we see on a daily basis is secondary to unhealthy lifestyles that are in turn a result of social and commercial determinants of health and our built environment. These same factors are also the main drivers of climate change and biodiversity loss. Therefore by focusing our efforts at the proximal end of the health-disease continuum we might not only address the perennial trolley crisis and our own healthcare emissions, but we might also reinvigorate our purpose as healthcare professionals as leaders in climate change advocacy.
The “WONCA tree” that depicts the many hats GPs wear in their daily lives now has an addition; a bedrock that consists of One Health, Planetary Health and Sustainability. No longer does the delivery of community based healthcare live in a vacuum of negligible waste and of infinite planetary resources. Now, with this revised definition, we are wedded to the natural systems upon which our health in all aspects of our work.
On this World Family Doctor Day 2024 consider walking the sustainability walk. By choosing active travel where feasible and practical, by regularly exercising and by adopting a predominantly plant based diet, patients are more likely to sense the authenticity and follow your modelling. We need to practice what we preach…if for no other reason than it is good for us!
Perhaps we can use “healthy planet, healthy people” to reframe our work and to find renewed purpose in our privileged roles as healthcare providers. Planetary Health isn’t “another thing we need to do”, it is asking us to practice holistic evidence based medicine that is mindful of our resources and our waste. It is asking us to be our best selves.
Find out more about Irish Doctors for the Environment at www.ide.ie
Find out more about WONCA World Family Doctor Day 2024 at https://worldfamilydoctorday.org/