https://www.infirmiere-canadienne.com/blogs/ic-contenu/2026/07/20/sante-planetaire-coeur-debat-public
Concrete actions you can take in your workplaces, communities, and professional organizations
By Rob Samulack, Kimberly LeBlanc, & Teri Forster
July 20, 2026
istockphoto.com/Yuliya Taba
Nurses are at the heart of every aspect of health care. We need to harness this power to be change agents for combating the climate crisis.
Canada marked the first National Day of Action on Planetary Health on October 6, 2025. The Globe and Mail and the Canadian Medical Association hosted an inspirational event aimed at implementing the Roadmap for Planetary Health and Sustainable Health Systems for Canadian Medical Professionals. Health leaders from across Canada attended the event, including the authors of this article.
We’ve written this follow-up article to help ensure that planetary health is kept at the forefront of public discourse year-round.
Why planetary health is important
Planetary health is a transdisciplinary, solutions-based approach to addressing the seemingly insurmountable global climate crisis. Rooted in Indigenous ways of knowing through a two-eyed seeing framework, integrating western scientific knowledge with Indigenous ecological wisdom, planetary health embraces an eco-centric worldview that recognizes humans as equal participants with nature. This differs from the dominant, western, egocentric approach, in which humans dominate and treat nature as something to be exploited.
The climate crisis is already having a profound impact on human health. Wildfires are destroying homes, forcing the evacuation of entire cities and communities, and exposing millions to smoke that causes both acute and chronic health complications. Heat-related illnesses are rising, particularly among vulnerable populations, while food and water scarcity continue to worsen. The spread of vector-borne and zoonotic diseases is increasing, and destabilized geopolitical conditions are fuelling conflict and migration crises.
Beyond climate change and global warming driven by fossil fuel use, additional environmental emergencies — such as catastrophic biodiversity loss and pollution from plastics and toxic chemicals — are further threatening planetary and human health.
Steps you can take to address planetary health
As individuals, we need to engage our hearts, our heads, and our hands. To engage our hearts, we need to let our emotions motivate us. We need to engage our heads – our minds – to create strategic plans. Then we must use our hands to implement those plans. Joining hands with others will allow us to accomplish more and go further.
The Roadmap for Planetary Health and Sustainable Health Systems has recommendations for every part of health care, including bedside patient care, institutional policy, changes to health-care professionals’ entry-to-practice education, and governmental policies. Spearheaded by the Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada, the roadmap has the potential to change how health-care professionals view planetary health. The roadmap identifies some major gaps, including low baseline knowledge among health-care leaders, lack of educational supports, lack of dedicated time and knowledgeable staff, and minimal funding to address this issue; it also notes a growth in negative mental health consequences as health-care workers learn of the crises, their inherent complexity, and competing priorities. The roadmap also takes into account the cost of evacuations during climate disasters such as wildfires and puts them into perspective.
Nurses are at the heart of every aspect of health care. We need to harness this power to be change agents for combating the climate crisis. Nurses can get involved by:
Nurse managers, institutional leaders, educators, and academics can get involved by:
- Creating green teams and participating in “greening criteria” that will soon become part of the institutional accreditation process. Planning for potential climate disasters can become part of institutional policy.
- Using resources from the Planetary Health Alliance to weave planetary health throughout nursing school curricula. Tools like the Planetary Health Report Card can be used to evaluate current programs to determine existing gaps.
- Sharing knowledge with colleagues and peers, formally and informally. You can contact ONE to participate in the Greening Nursing School Community of Practice.
Learning about these crises can cause eco-anxiety and eco-grief. Self-care is necessary, but action leads to hope. The news and prognosis are bleak, but society has banded together before to solve big problems. By working in an organized, collective manner, we can address this problem too.
Rob Samulack, RN, BScN, B.Eng., is a clinical instructor and faculty liaison with Algonquin College, chair of RNAO’s Ontario Nurses for the Environment (ONE), and a nurse psychotherapist with Heart & Mind Psychotherapy.
Kimberly LeBlanc, RN, PhD, NSWOC, WOCC(C), FCAN, FNSWOC, FAAN, is the academic chair of Nurses Specialized in Wound, Ostomy and Continence Canada (NSWOCC).
Teri Forster, LPN, MAL, is a regional council member with the BC Nurses’ Union and a nurse with the Northern Health Authority.
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