Planetary Health Committee – IFMSA-Quebec

Name of the activity: Planetary Health Committee

Country/NMO: IFMSA-Quebec

Program: Environment and Health

Contact information: contact [email protected] to get in touch with the Activity Coordinator

Type of the activity: Continuous Activity

Category: Capacity Building

Focus area: Climate Change, Health Sustainability and Green Hospitals

Sustainable Development Goals addressed: SDG 3 (Good Health and Well-Being), SDG 13 (Climate Action)

Problem statement:

Climate change is the biggest health threat of the 21st century. In Québec, there is a need to unite the efforts of different related initiatives already started by several LCs. Moreover, we realized that there was need for improvement in many aspects of healthcare regarding planetary health, such as integrating climate change in medical curricula, greening hospitals, implementing compost in universities and implicating medical students within different organizations tackling planetary health.

Target groups:

• General population
• Medical students
• Doctors
• Academic Healthcare Institutions

Beneficiaries:

• General population
• Medical students
• Doctors
• Academic Healthcare Institutions

Objectives:

Integrate climate change and health education components in the medical curricula of all Quebec medical schools.

Support medical students participation in reducing the environmental footprint of Quebec hospitals.

Provide medical students with online opportunities and events to learn about the impacts of climate change on health.

Promote sustainable and low carbon footprint events in IFMSA-Québec.

Collaborate with HEART (CFMS’s planetary health task force)

Insure the sharing of local activities ideas

Collaborate with AQME, «La planète s’invite en santé» and «Synergie Santé Environnement». 

Insure an international representation and collaboration with other NMOs

Insure a presence in the medias that reach medical students

Implement compost on all campuses of Québec

Indicators of Success:

A local student advocacy team is formed in all medical schools to work on integration of climate change in medical curricula, At least one meeting is held with members of the faculty to advocate for changes in the curricula

At least 5 sustainable development coordinators of teaching hospitals are contacted.

At least 2 webinars or online campaigns were held

The guide for the organization of eco responsible events is updated

The green coordinator assists every HEART meeting, at least one project is done in collaboration with HEART

A green coordinator is nominated in every campus, a green committee is formed in all campuses, regular meetings are with all the green coordinators in Québec

One member of the Task Force assists the meetings of these instances

The green coordinator is part of an international WhatsApp group and assists meetings with other NMOs

The IFMSA-Québec website has and tab for ressources on planetary health

All campuses of Québec have compost

Methodology:

First, we formed our 11 members committee, composed of the NPO, NOGH and the green coordinator as permanent members, and 8 members that we recruited from different campuses. Then, we agreed on the 10 objectives on which we would work on through the year. At our first meeting, the 10 members chose the objectives on which they wanted to work, so the work is being done in parallel for every objective. The responsibles of every objective have to decide what are their goals, success indicators and their plans to achieve those. For example, the plan for our collaborations is to get in contact with the heads of the instances, get a meeting with them, explain who we are and what we do, discuss the possibility of being part of their meetings and see how we could collaborate. One of our members is already part of the administrative board of «Synergie Santé Environnement». The committee has meetings every 3 to 4 weeks to give updates about every objective and give feedback to each other.

Plans for evaluation:

Since the Task Force is new, we are still working on how to evaluate our work. We decided that we would create an annual plan for each objective that will allow us to keep track of our work and success indicators (SI). At the end of the year, we will create a report in which we will evaluate what has been done and which SI were filled so that we can determine which improvements need to be made. In Québec, we also have an «Activity Management and Evaluation Mastersheet» which can be filled before and after activities, such as webinars, to evaluate them. For the webinars/workshops, we will make evaluation surveys to assess the improvement of knowledge of the participants. We also plan on distributing a survey to all medical students of Québec to assess their satisfaction with the work of the Task Force in order to adjust our objectives and SI. Also, to determine if we achieved our goals, we will have a table where each objective will be evaluated on a scale of 1 to 5 according to the SI.

External collaborations:

none