SFU’s Medical School Needs To Be Grounded in Planetary Health — An Open Letter

Unceded səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) & kʷikʷəƛ̓əm (Kwikwetlem) Territories (BURNABY, BC)

The new medical school at Simon Fraser University (SFU), announced by Premier David Eby, will be the first medical school built in Western Canada in over half a century. With the recruitment of an interim dean and a $4.9 million dollar investment in start-up funding, the school is planning to admit its first students in September 2026. 

In pursuit of this goal, SFU will be tasked with the development of a curriculum that will shape how our future doctors are educated, equipped, and empowered to meet the needs of patients and communities across British Columbia.

As experts and educators in health and medicine and advocates for patients and communities, we call upon the Government of British Columbia and the leadership at SFU to ensure that SFU’s new medical school curriculum is grounded in planetary health.

Planetary health is an evidence-based, population approach to public health and medicine. It acknowledges the complex interdependence of individuals, social groups, species, and our shared environment and emphasizes the importance of community-based primary care and Indigenous knowledge on health and wellness. Planetary Health is the key to providing effective health and medical services because it emphasizes the importance of upstream social and ecological determinants  which have a much greater role in health than is commonly understood. Foundational to a planetary health approach is the understanding that the health of human populations is dependent on healthy ecosystems and a healthy planet. This has been recognized in Indigenous knowledge since time immemorial: the ecosystem is our health system.

A planetary health curriculum teaches medical students about how a patient’s social and natural environment shapes their health and well-being. It trains them to think critically, holistically, and at a systems level as they study the underlying causes of poor health. Most importantly, a planetary health curriculum could equip doctors with more than a prescription pad, by training them in clinical and population strategies that will make them better healthcare providers and advocates for their patients and the environments in which they live. Current medical students, including those represented by the Canadian Federation of Medical Students, already indicate strong demand for these skills.

When applied in clinical settings, planetary health education helps doctors to look beyond physical manifestations of sickness and focus on the social and environmental factors that give rise to poor health in the first place. This will be critically important as climate change continues to impact the health and wellbeing of individuals and communities across British Columbia. In meeting our community’s emerging needs through the adoption of a planetary health curriculum, doctors will be better equipped to support patients and communities to achieve optimal levels of health by recognizing that people are more than their bodies and that sickness is more than disease. Operationalized through programs such as social prescribing, nature-based prescribing, and other non-pharmaceutical patient supports, planetary health education supports tomorrow’s doctors in not only treating disease but actively engaging patients in wellness and prevention of disease. Doctors with an understanding of planetary health thereby become powerful assets to engage their communities as they contribute to the improvement of social and environmental conditions locally, but with global impact. This is why student-led initiatives supporting the uptake of planetary health in medical schools have naturally emerged to help with the institutionalization of planetary health medical education. 

SFU medical school graduates trained with a planetary health curriculum will be better equipped to support and advocate for families and communities. They will be more resilient to the stresses of the health system because they will have a better set of tools to support their patients and communities. As leaders in the healthcare system, future SFU-trained doctors will support system changes that will prevent disease and protect environments. In doing so, they will help reduce demand for services and the cost of healthcare, they will remedy health inequities arising from upstream social and environmental determinants, and they will be more responsive to our ever-evolving needs and challenges.

If SFU chooses to become the first “Planetary Health” medical school in Canada, we believe it will revolutionize medical training, support reconciliation between Indigenous and Western knowledges about health, and restore the dignity of doctors as engaged caretakers of their communities. A real-world, case-based learning approach to teaching planetary health to medical students will therefore be a tremendous asset to British Columbians. Such benefits are exactly what our future communities need as they face the changing and challenging environments of tomorrow. We call for a modern, world-leading, made-in-BC approach to medical school training that will educate, equip, and empower doctors in such a way that can only be achieved through the adoption of a planetary health curriculum. 

Sincerely,