Memorial University’s Faculty of Medicine’s first Planetary Health Report Card will be released today, Earth Day, joining 11 other medical schools across Canada.
Founded in 2019, the Planetary Health Report Card is an international health student community working to inspire institutional change.
It has since grown to include 188 institutions across 21 countries and 10 health disciplines, all aiming to improve our collective planetary health.
Participation in the project places Memorial within this international effort to better understand and respond to the health impacts of climate change.
The yearly report card acts as a needs assessment tool to help institutions identify strengths, gaps and areas for improvement.
Student-led work
At each participating institution, student-led, faculty-mentored teams fill out the report card, identifying opportunities for improvement.
Second-year medical students Arista Marthyman and Leah Curnew and first-year medical students Kaur Kirndeep Singh (Kira), Briana Creed and Ann Seety led the initiative at Memorial.
Doctor of public health student Kathleen Mather also supported the project, and I acted as faculty advisor.
The project was also supported by Quality of Care NL and its environmental team. Dr. Atanu Sarkar, a professor of population health and applied health sciences in the Faculty of Medicine, and Toby Rowe, sustainability co-ordinator with the Memorial’s Sustainability Office, provided additional guidance.
Performance
The report evaluates performance across five core areas: curriculum; interdisciplinary research; community outreach and advocacy; support for student-led initiatives; and campus sustainability, administering scores from A-F for each area, as well as a composite score.
The Faculty of Medicine, in its inaugural evaluation, received an overall score of C with scores for each category as follows: curriculum: C+; interdisciplinary research: C; community outreach: C+; support for student-led initiatives: B; and campus sustainability: D+.
This places the faculty in line with many other Canadian medical schools working towards climate resilience, which range from composite scores of B for the University of Saskatchewan and McGill University to C- for the University of Alberta.
Future work, future grades
Completing the report required a detailed review of the undergraduate medical curriculum, along with an assessment of research activity, outreach efforts, institutional supports and sustainability practices.
The process contributes to a global framework for medical and health professional schools to track their planetary health progress.
Schools that achieve a higher grade in subsequent years receive a leaf designation on their websites to mark their improvements, and the results provide a snapshot of current performance and help guide future action.
Beyond the score, the report offers insights that can support curriculum development, expand research opportunities and help align institutional priorities with sustainability goals.
Action items
The Faculty of Medicine’s report offers recommendations from expanding planetary health curriculum into clerkship and professional development courses to improving campus-wide food procurement and services.
The work aligns with the Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada Roadmap for Planetary Health and Sustainable Health Systems, which all Canadian medical school deans endorsed in 2024.
These efforts reflect growing awareness of health care’s environmental impact and the need for systemic change.
In Canada, the sector accounts for roughly five per cent of national emissions and has increasingly adopted a “throwaway” model in the name of sterility.
As Memorial joins this global movement, its students and faculty highlight a clear truth: human health depends on planetary health.
This Earth Day marks an important step forward for Memorial’s Faculty of Medicine’s commitment to action.
