Description

Join Dr. Sarah Oerther on October 3rd at 12:00pm for this live, virtual webinar! 

Teaching Planetary Health During the Anthropocene Epoch

The Anthropocene is a geological epoch acknowledging human activity's influence on the planet's climate and ecosystem. It recognizes that human actions have been the primary factor affecting the environment, both locally and globally, for the past couple of centuries and will continue to do so in the foreseeable future. Currently, communities worldwide are facing new health challenges related to significant fluctuations in temperature. These have led to droughts, floods, changes in air quality, and unexpected variations in insect and rodent disease vectors. Unfortunately, many nursing students lack the knowledge, experience, or skills to collaboratively respond to these complex health challenges emerging in the 21st century. Therefore, there is a need to re-evaluate the curriculum to provide fresh insights into new health challenges related to living and working in the Anthropocene. The purpose of this presentation is to describe how a Planetary Health lens can enable an understanding and appreciation of the critical linkages, cause-effect relationships, and feedback loops between environmental change and human health in the Anthropocene epoch.

Sarah Oerther Ph.D., M.Ed, RN, FNP-BC, FNAP, ANEF is an Assistant Professor at Goldfarb School of Nursing at Barnes-Jewish College. To promote climate resilience, Dr. Oerther seeks to create culturally appropriate tools that can help individuals assess their risk and take necessary action to protect their health. By doing so, her program of research is expected to reduce the economic burden caused by preventable climate-related illnesses and ensure a healthier and more productive society. She is currently part of the 2024 cohort for Environmental Health Research Institute for Nurse and Clinician Scientists (EHRI-NCS) and was recently selected as a CHARTER fellow for 2024 with the Woodruff Health Sciences Center at Emory University.

Questions? Please contact JoAnn Busby at admin@missourinurses.org with any questions.