Are Physicians Ready to Take up Leadership Roles in Planetary Health?

Introduction: Physicians’ role is primarily thought to provide patient care. They also contribute to improve healthcare systems & health indicators. However, their role in planetary health has not been established nor defined yet. Young Physician Leaders Programme (YPL) is a flagship training programme of the InterAcademy Partnership (IAP) – the parent academy of 149 national science academies worldwide. IAP has a mission to “foster the next generation of research and science policy leaders” by strengthening critical capacities for leadership. 

YPL programme is running since 2011. It has 21 new members and 231 Alumni across 5 continents. Each year, national academies send their nominations to IAP and its expert medical panel selects the new cohort (~20 members). World Health Summit, M8 Alliance and European School of Management and Technology (ESMT) are main programme partners, among others.

Objective: To explore the engagement of YPL alumni in health sector in the context of emerging global discourse on planetary health.

Methods: A semi-structured questionnaire was developed based on literature review and distributed electronically to the 10-year YPL cohorts (2011-2022), with assistance from the IAP Secretariat. The 8-member YPL Alumni Steering Committee coordinated the study, in collaboration with the ESMT. EMST ethics committee provided ethical clearance to the survey. Descriptive statistics was used to analyse the data.

Results: Out of 235 physicians approached, 77 (33%) completed the survey. 51% were female. Majority (73%) represented LMICs. 52% of the respondents were engaged in clinical practice, 60% in research, 29% in strategic and policymaking roles, 14% in bureaucracy. While 30% of the respondents worked from central or federal level, the majority (58%) worked from local level (district or community facilities).

Conclusions: Physicians are extending their work area beyond curative medicine, embracing upstream approaches to impact population health. Therefore, it is important to acknowledge physicians as key stakeholders of planetary health and engage them in global initiatives.

Discussion: Physicians’ community represent highly educated and respected professionals and apt science communicators, so they could be the most suitable messengers/ debaters/ negotiators for planetary health. Next generation physicians should be educated to recognize planetary health as the foundation for any efforts to improve human health.

Poster link: https://platform.genevahealthforum.com/index.php/other

Other sources: www.glohmed.org