Australia put forward its first submission to the International Planetary Health Report Card (PHRC). The PHRC is an international student-driven initiative that evaluates planetary health education in medical schools and tracks institutional progress over time. This ensures the sharing of knowledge globally to help all universities improve together and to assist in mitigating the environmental impact of clinical care. This submission is imperative because The World Health Organisation estimates between 2030 to 2050, there will be an additional 250,000 deaths annually from climate change, making it the single largest health threat to humanity. Australia’s PHRC was spearheaded by Emily Coady, the Global Health Chair of the Australian Medical Students’ Association (AMSA) and incoming Co-Director of the PHRC, and Dr Grant Silbert, a junior doctor at St Vincent’s Hospital in Melbourne and active member of Doctors for the Environment Australia (DEA).

“As future health professionals, we must be prepared to address the impacts of climate change on our patients’ health,” says Emily Coady. “It is imperative that we hold our institutions accountable for educating health students on planetary health and education for sustainable healthcare. The Planetary Health Report Card puts the power in students’ hands to assess our universities, track their changes over time and inspire institutional change for the better, and it is so  exciting to have Australian medical schools on board for the first time in the 2023-2024 cycle.”

For the 2023-2024 cycle, contributions were provided by 151 healthcare professional universities spanning 18 countries. Six Australian medical schools completed the scorecard: Curtin University, Melbourne University, Monash University, University of Queensland, University of Tasmania and University of Wollongong. Both the Doctors for the Environment Australia and AMSA have welcomed Australian medical schools into this global publication. 

The PHRC reports discrete metrics in five key areas: curriculum, interdisciplinary research in health and environment, community outreach and advocacy, support for student-led initiatives and campus sustainability. An overall grade between A – F is provided to summarise all five categories, with a higher grade reflective of a better curriculum in safeguarding environmental health. 

Across the six Australian medical schools, the scores ranged from B to D-, with a median of C. This highlights substantial changes are necessary to the medical school curriculum, and that significant progress remains to be made to promote sustainability within healthcare. Indeed, The Australian Medical Council, an independent national standards body for medical education, recently updated its standards to require planetary health as a part of the medical curriculum and prevocational training. The PHRC further highlights the important and urgent progress to be made in Australian medical education. 

Concerningly, healthcare contributes between four to five percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, and if healthcare were a country, it would be the country with the fifth largest greenhouse emission globally. Further, the global medicine PHRC states that “because climate change and environmental threats disproportionately affect marginalised populations, these issues are inherently ones of equity and justice.” 

By embracing the findings of this report, and enacting tangible changes to the medical curriculum, it can equip Australia’s future healthcare professionals to respond in “addressing the unfolding impacts of human-caused environmental changes on our patients’ health.”