Discussing the links between human and ecosystem health with Diné activist and speaker Pat McCabe, scholar of Indigenous medicine Dr Nicole Redvers, and interdisciplinary social scientist Dr Lucy Szaboova.
This webinar explored the connections between the health of humans and the health of the environments and ecosystems we live within. This essential link is often treated as tangential to medical and public health research or treated as its own separate research field. How humans and human cultures shape and are shaped by our wider environment deserves focus within health research. This webinar began to explore why this integration is important, and what it could look like in practice.
Speakers
Pat McCabe (Woman Stands Shining) is a Diné grandmother, activist, artist, and international speaker. Her primary work is proposing to the Five-Fingered-Ones, that paradigm is a choice, and pointing to Indigenous cultures as examples that we have evidence that human beings can participate in paradigms in which we can become beings capable of causing all life to thrive.
Dr Nicole Redvers, ND, MPH, DPhilc, is a member of the Deninu K’ue First Nation (NWT) and has worked with Indigenous patients, scholars, and communities around the globe her entire career. She is co-founder, board member, and past board chair of the Arctic Indigenous Wellness Foundation based in the Canadian North with her foundation awarded the $1 million-dollar 2017 Arctic Inspiration Prize for their work with vulnerable populations within Land-based healing settings in the Northwest Territories. Dr. Redvers is a coming associate professor and Director of Indigenous Planetary Health at the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry at the University of Western having previous appointments in both the Department of Family & Community Medicine and the Department of Indigenous Health at the University of North Dakota where she has helped co-develop the first Indigenous Health PhD degree program in North America. She has been actively involved at regional, national, and international levels promoting the inclusion of Indigenous perspectives in both human and planetary health research and practice. Dr. Redvers sits on the Canada Research Coordinating Committees’ Indigenous Leadership Circle in Research, is a commissioner on the Lancet Commission on Arctic Health, sits on the steering committee for the Planetary Health Alliance, and sits on the Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada Task Force on the Effects of Climate Change on Health. Her scholarly work engages a breadth of scholarly projects attempting to bridge gaps between Indigenous and Western ways of knowing as it pertains to individual, community and planetary health. Dr. Redvers is the author of the trade paperback book titled, ‘The Science of the Sacred: Bridging Global Indigenous Medicine Systems and Modern Scientific Principles’.
Dr Lucy Szaboova is an interdisciplinary social scientist, based at the University of Exeter’s European Centre for Environment and Human Health (ECEHH). Her research explores the relationship between people and their environment in the context of global change processes. She applies a systems lens to understand interactions and feedbacks within and between society and the environment, and their implications for wellbeing and resilience. In her research, she employs qualitative and participatory methods and approaches to co-produce an understanding of socially differentiated experiences of global challenges such as migration, urbanization, and resource use in the context of changing climate and environmental conditions. She strives to promote the integration of underrepresented and marginalised voices into policy discourses, especially around development and climate change adaptation.
Chair
Dr Grace Iara Souza, Synchronicity Earth. Dr Grace Iara Souza is a professional learner who has dedicated the past 18 years to learning about socio-environmental conservation related to Brazil from a global perspective, while also engaging with knowledge sharing with multiple stakeholders. She started her career implementing carbon credit projects in the bioenergy sector in Brazil, migrating to a deeper understanding of the impacts of global environmental governance and social policies to local rainforest defenders in the Brazilian Amazon. Grace’s academic training is rooted in Political Ecology. Her professional experience includes project management for educational, private, and charity sectors, teaching in higher education and researching environmental conservation and development.
This event was part one of a four-part series entitled: Physical, Mental, & Planetary Health: exploring the links between the environment and health.
Jointly organised by Flourishing Diversity, the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health at the University of Exeter, and the Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities at the University of Oxford, this webinar series brings together voices from all over the world to explore humanity’s interconnection with lands, waters, forests, and fellow species, highlighting the crucial role that biocultural diversity plays in the health of people and populations.
A recording of part two, on the relationship between climate change and mental health, can be found here. Part three will cover “Health systems, culture, and climate change,” and part four will conclude the with a discussion about “Uniting the health of people and planet: paths to a sustainable and healthy future.”
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