How the University of Waterloo’s pharmacy school is integrating planetary health into their curriculum

Earlier this summer, the University of Waterloo’s school of pharmacy hosted a workshop about planetary health in pharmacy teaching. Bringing together professors from across the school of pharmacy, the workshop taught the instructors about the importance of sustainability in pharmacy practice, and how the earth’s health is integral for human health. Cynthia Richard, a faculty member and director of curriculum at UWaterloo’s School of Pharmacy, says that she and fellow faculty member Allison Slater were inspired to put on the workshop after attending a national conference in 2024. There, the two educators watched climate change pharmacist and co-chair of the Canadian Association of Pharmacy for the Earth (CAPhE) Shellyza Sajwani’s opening keynote speech, which drove home the importance of planetary health in pharmacy practice. “I’m going to admit my ignorance, but I just did not know quite the extent to which healthcare contributed to some of the problems we’re seeing,” Richard says. Sajwani’s keynote was “really eye-opening” for her—especially the practical examples and class activities Sajwani provided. “Learning as we were going and also seeing the practical nature of how this can exist within our current structure was great.”At the same time, Randilynne Urslak, a pharmacist at the Ottawa Hospital and a recent Waterloo graduate, had just published a scoping review of what pharmacy schools were already doing in the area of planetary health. Combined with her connections to pharmacy schools like Waterloo’s, Urslak’s research became the starting point for creating a planetary health education model for pharmacy educators. Her research “told us what was happening in the world in terms of planetary health incorporation within pharmacy curriculum,” explains Sajwani. “It’s no longer a new, innovative, far-off thing. It’s something that is being incorporated in curricula, and there are opportunities for future incorporation.” As she presented her findings, Urslak began to realize that faculty members didn’t know what to do with this new knowledge. At the same time, Waterloo had landed some small grants to bring expert speakers in planetary health to campus. Everything fell into place and soon, Urslak and Sajwani were on their way to Waterloo to facilitate the workshop.The workshop, which was three hours long and included all faculty members from Waterloo’s School of Pharmacy and some staff from the school’s climate institute, was split into four parts: an introduction to planetary health and pharmacy practice, mitigation, adaptation to environmental disruptions and integration into curriculum. There were case studies, examples of courses where planetary health could be included and lots of engaging small-group discussion. Urslak says that explicitly linking pharmacy practice to planetary health was important to her. “We already teach things in pharmacy that are linked to the environment, we just don’t make that direct link,” she says. Topics like antimicrobial stewardship, for example, is taught—but there’s no mention of the planet when doing so.For Sajwani, teaching pharmacists about sustainability and planetary health is timely. Pharmacists are traditionally trained under the assumption of a stable healthcare system—one that doesn’t exist anymore because of climate change and the environmental changes that everyone is impacted by now. “We’re seeing, in real-time, the impacts of climate change on health. We see how extreme weather events disrupt medication access, how wildfire smoke impacts health, how heat affects cardiovascular disease, how heat impacts the management of every single medication,” Sajwani explains, adding that the government is also beginning to think about climate resiliency and healthcare. “It’s important for pharmacists not to be left out—if we are, access to medications will be threatened and the profession won’t benefit from the momentum and resources in the space and our patients will feel the impact of that.”

How the University of Waterloo’s pharmacy school is integrating planetary health into their curriculum

Register for free access or login.

Related Topics

Business Topic