This Friedman Seminar features Sam Myers, Senior Research Scientist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and an Instructor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, presenting “Planetary health and nutrition: Tracking the human nutritional consequences of accelerating global environmental change.”
Bio
Samuel Myers, MD, MPH works at the intersection of human health and global environmental change. He is a Senior Research Scientist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and an Instructor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He is also Director of the Planetary Health Alliance. Sam’s current work spans several areas of planetary health including 1) the global nutritional impacts of rising concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere; 2) the health impacts of land management decisions in SE Asia associated with biomass burning and particulate air pollution; 3) the nutritional impacts of reduced access to wildlife (bushmeat) in the diet in Madagascar; 4) the local (in Madagascar) and global consequences of fisheries decline for human nutrition and health; and 5) the impact of animal pollinator declines on human nutrition at a global scale. As the Director of the Planetary Health Alliance, Sam oversees a multi-institutional effort to support research, education and policy efforts around the world focused on understanding and quantifying the human health impacts of global environmental change and translating that understanding into resource management decisions globally. Dr. Myers serves as a Commissioner on the Lancet-Rockefeller Foundation Commission on Planetary Health and was recently awarded the Prince Albert II of Monaco—Institut Pasteur Award 2015 for research at the interface of global environmental change and human health.
Abstract
We find ourselves at an interesting moment in human history when global food demand is rising more steeply than ever before in human history at the same time that many of the fundamental biophysical conditions that underpin global food production (agriculture, animal husbandry, fisheries) are changing much more rapidly than ever before in human history.
I will briefly discuss some of the global trends and introduce the concept of Planetary Health. Then I will introduce some of our group’s research into nutritional consequences of some of these trends (rising CO2, pollinator declines, changes in the status of global fisheries, access to bushmeat) and discuss some of the important data gaps to move this field forward.