From global health to planetary health: what is the future governance of the health of people and the planet

Speaker:  Dr Renzo Guinto (Institute of Tropical Medicine) and Professor Kenji Shibuya (King's College London)

In recent years, planetary health has evolved not just as an emerging field of scientific inquiry but also as a novel policy framework, fresh ethical paradigm, and renewed basis for collective action that integrates both the health of people and the planet.

Over the past century, human activities have grown economies, improved health, and enhanced the quality of life – at the expense of the world’s natural resources. Today, global environmental change – not just in the form of climate change but also biodiversity loss, ocean acidification, and other ecosystem alterations – is threatening the health of future generations in return.

These issues at the nexus of human health and the environment present new challenges for governance at all levels – local, national, regional, and global. Unfortunately, today’s governance institutions – from global health organizations to national health ministries – are hugely incompatible with the nature, magnitude, and scale of these contemporary planetary health problems.

In this seminar, Dr Renzo Guinto will share his perspectives about this new exciting field of planetary health. He will also pose pressing questions and offer initial proposals for the future of planetary health governance in the 21^st century.

*If you are external to King's, please contact the event organiser to let them know you are coming.

A Filipino physician working at the nexus of global health and sustainable development, Dr Renzo Guinto is the Chief Planetary Doctor of PH Lab – a ‘glo-cal think-and-do tank’ for advancing the health of both people and the planet. One of the staunchest, most exciting, and innovative voices for planetary health from the Global South, Renzo is the youngest and sole student member of the Editorial Advisory Board of The Lancet Planetary Health, the world’s first planetary health journal, and a founding member of the Emerging Scholars Network of the Planetary Health Alliance, which is headquartered at Harvard University. Renzo recently finished his Doctor of Public Health degree at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. For his doctoral thesis, Renzo investigated local health system responses to climate change in coastal municipalities in the Philippines. From September to December 2019 he joins the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp, Belgium as a Visiting Fellow, focusing on the political economy of planetary health and the decolonization of global health.

A global health ‘deep generalist,’ Renzo brings with him nearly a decade of experience in global health policy, research, advocacy, implementation, and innovation at local, national, regional, and international levels, covering the public and private sectors as well as civil society and the United Nations system, and spanning a diverse range of themes such as climate change, planetary health, universal health care, migrant health, global health security, noncommunicable diseases, global health governance and diplomacy, healthcare innovation, social determinants of health, among others. Previously, he worked for the Philippine Department of Health, International Organization for Migration, World Health Organization, World Bank, Health Care Without Harm, UP Manila Universal Health Care Study Group and Harvard Center for Climate, Health and the Global Environment. He received numerous prestigious fellowships including the New Voices Fellowship of the Aspen Institute in Washington, DC and the Emerging Voices for Global Health in Cape Town, South Africa.

Renzo obtained his Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of the Philippines Manila (under the accelerated INTARMED programme), and received additional training from the University of Oxford, Copenhagen School of Global Health, University of the Western Cape in South Africa, and East-West Center in Hawaii. Renzo has traveled to and lectured in nearly 50 countries; published more than 50 articles in scientific journals, books, and popular media; and directed and produced short films that communicate the message of planetary healing to the world.

Professor Kenji Shibuya is currently Professor and Director, University Institute for Population Health at King’s College London. His expertise ranges across important topics in health metrics and evaluation; global burden of disease and risk factor analysis; health financing and cost-effectiveness; health system performance; health financing with an emphasis on universal health coverage; and product and system innovations; public-private partnerships; and R&D strategies. His global policy vision, with an emphasis on local ownership, performance, partnership and innovation has become the core of the new global health strategy of the Japanese government. 

Kenji has been an advisor to both central and local governments, and most recently he was appointed as Special Advisor to the Director-General of the World Health Organization on health metrics and data. He spearheaded the future strategic directions of the Japanese global health policy agenda after the Hokkaido Toyako G8 Summit in 2008. He led the Lancet Series on Japan, published in 2011 in an effort to jump-start debates on Japanese domestic and global health policy reform. In 2015, he chaired the landmark Advisory Panel on Health Care 2035 for the Minister of Health, Labour and Welfare. He obtained his MD at the University of Tokyo in 1991 and earned a doctorate of public health in international health economics at Harvard University in 1999.