Pioneering a Glocal Virtual Classroom for Planetary Health

Pioneering a Glocal Virtual Classroom for Planetary Health | Authorea try { document.documentElement.classList.add('js'); } catch (e) { } var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'G-8VDV14Y67G']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); Skip to main content Preprints Collections Wiley Open Research IET Open Research Ecological Society of Japan All Collections About About Authorea FAQs Contact Us Quick Search anywhere Search for preprint articles, keywords, etc. Search Search ADVANCED SEARCH SCROLL This is a preprint and has not been peer reviewed. Data may be preliminary. 4 March 2025 V1 Latest version Share on Pioneering a Glocal Virtual Classroom for Planetary Health Authors : Dianne Jaula Cunanan 0009-0002-6688-1528 , Julia Addison , Camilla Alay Llamas , George S. Downward , Joyce Browne L , and Renzo R. Guinto [email protected] Authors Info & Affiliations https://doi.org/10.22541/au.174108858.85991247/v1 342 views 157 downloads Contents Abstract Information & Authors Metrics & Citations View Options References Figures Tables Media Share Abstract The growing worldwide challenges of climate change, environmental degradation with biodiversity loss, and systemic inequities call for accessible, transformative and impactful planetary health education that embraces a global perspective. However, traditional international learning experiences favor those with financial advantages, limiting equitable access to (planetary health) knowledge, intercultural collaboration competencies, and leadership opportunities. To address this challenge, the University Medical Center (UMC) Utrecht in the Netherlands and St. Luke’s Medical Center College of Medicine’s Planetary and Global Health Program (PGHP) in the Philippines developed a joint online course on planetary health and climate-resilient health systems, combining synchronous and asynchronous learning activities. This novel approach allowed for collaboration between Dutch and Filipino medical students, integrating international perspectives while providing an opportunity to solve local problems, and offering equitable access to education. The course incorporated online modules, workshops, and mentorship, blending expertise from educators from the Netherlands and the Philippines. Through the course, participants engaged intercultural teamwork, focusing on student-identified planetary health priority issues such as eco-anxiety, fast fashion, and healthcare waste management. This initiative illustrates the importance and feasibility of collaborative, glocal approaches to planetary health education, with learners gaining insights into localized solutions for global issues. It also showed how the values of decolonizing global health education and bidirectional knowledge exchange can turn intercultural learning into educational practice. Future iterations will expand the course to involve more countries, refine the use of interactive tools, address time-zone challenges, and incorporate education research to further study the learning process and outcomes. Institutional support is essential to scale this educational model, ensuring planetary health education remains accessible and impactful. Pioneering a Glocal Virtual Classroom for Planetary Health Short running title: Pioneering a Glocal Virtual Classroom Dianne Jaula Cunanan*, MD 1 , Julia Addison*, MSc 2 , Camilla Alay Llamas, MD MPH 2 George S. Downward, MD PhD 2,3 , Joyce L Browne^, MD PhD 2,4 , Renzo R. Guinto^, MD DrPH 1,5 1) Planetary and Global Health Program, St. Luke’s Medical Center College of Medicine-William H. Quasha Memorial, Quezon City, Philippines 2) Department of Global Public Health and Bioethics, Julius Center for Health Sciences and Primary Care, Universitair Medisch Centrum Utrecht, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands 3) Institute for Risk Assessment Sciences (IRAS), Utrecht University, The Netherlands 4) Utrecht University Centre for Global Challenges (UGlobe), Faculty of Law, Economics, Governance and Organization (REBO), Utrecht University 5) SingHealth Duke-NUS Global Health Institute, Duke-NUS Medical School, National University of Singapore, Singapore Corresponding author: Renzo R. Guinto, MD DrPH, [email protected] *Shared first authors Funder statement This project has been funded by the Ministry of Education, Culture, and Science in the Netherlands and the Alliance between TU Eindhoven, Wageningen University & Research, Utrecht University, and UMC Utrecht (EWUU) in the Netherlands. Conflict of Interest Statement The authors declare that they have no competing interests. Data availability statement Data sharing is not applicable to this manuscript as no new data were generated, reported or analyzed in this study. Abstract The growing worldwide challenges of climate change, environmental degradation with biodiversity loss, and systemic inequities call for accessible, transformative and impactful planetary health education that embraces a global perspective. However, traditional international learning experiences favor those with financial advantages, limiting equitable access to (planetary health) knowledge, intercultural collaboration competencies, and leadership opportunities. To address this challenge, the University Medical Center (UMC) Utrecht in the Netherlands and St. Luke’s Medical Center College of Medicine’s Planetary and Global Health Program (PGHP) in the Philippines developed a joint online course on planetary health and climate-resilient health systems, combining synchronous and asynchronous learning activities. This novel approach allowed for collaboration between Dutch and Filipino medical students, integrating international perspectives while providing an opportunity to solve local problems, and offering equitable access to education. The course incorporated online modules, workshops, and mentorship, blending expertise from educators from the Netherlands and the Philippines. Through the course, participants engaged intercultural teamwork, focusing on student-identified planetary health priority issues such as eco-anxiety, fast fashion, and healthcare waste management. This initiative illustrates the importance and feasibility of collaborative, glocal approaches to planetary health education, with learners gaining insights into localized solutions for global issues. It also showed how the values of decolonizing global health education and bidirectional knowledge exchange can turn intercultural learning into educational practice. Future iterations will expand the course to involve more countries, refine the use of interactive tools, address time-zone challenges, and incorporate education research to further study the learning process and outcomes. Institutional support is essential to scale this educational model, ensuring planetary health education remains accessible and impactful. Keywords: planetary health, climate action, medical education, transnational education, online learning, decolonization, equity, transformative learning The planetary health education challenge Climate change, environmental pollution, and biodiversity loss, coupled with existing systemic societal inequities, continue to threaten both human well-being and the stability of Earth’s natural systems 1 . The field of planetary health holds the potential to address the unsustainable relationship between people and the planet 1 . To realize this potential, citizen education is essential to support the growing worldwide movement that calls for immediate transformative action to tackle the planetary health crisis 1 . As such, there is an urgent need for equitable, inclusive, and transformative education that invests in future leaders to tackle global and local challenges. 2,3 In recent years, there has been a gradual rise in planetary health educational frameworks 4 , university programs 5 , and innovative approaches such as massive open online courses 6 , virtual academies 7 , or field-based learning 8 . Young people today demand more capacity-building opportunities and leadership involvement in the evolving planetary health space 9 . Yet, there is a noticeable resource inequity – with most planetary health courses and initiatives created and/or offered in high-income countries 5,6 . Participation in globally oriented education activities often favor those with financial resources, limiting access for students in low-resource settings and/or communities. Online learning tackles this barrier and offers a more equitable alternative, unconstrained by geographic and financial limitations, with the potential to scale up and accommodate a larger number of students 10,11 . A glocal virtual classroom on planetary health Planetary health challenges, while global in nature, manifest differently across communities and jurisdictions 6 . To address this, the University Medical Center (UMC) Utrecht in the Netherlands and St. Luke’s Medical Center College of Medicine’s Planetary and Global Health Program (PGHP) in the Philippines developed a joint ”glocal” (global and local) virtual classroom to bring together learners from different socio-cultural, economic and health systems’ backgrounds. The Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) course “Planetary Health and Climate-Resilient Health Systems (PHCRHS)” took place between February to April 2023 10 . COIL is an innovative, didactic approach within the “internationalisaton at home” umbrella, connecting distant students and academics online for collaborative, international learning 10 . Through this approach, the course aimed to not only equip students with planetary health knowledge but also to develop the transformative and intercultural competences necessary to enable them to become future agents of change in the field 2,3 . Both asynchronous and asynchronous learning activities were utlised towards this goal ( Figure 1). Self-paced online modules provided foundational knowledge on environmental health issues, health systems strengthening, health equity, and green and sustainable healthcare. Synchronous online workshops, blending Dutch and Filipino expertise, were dedicated to skills development in international and intercultural collaboration, infographic development, and scientific communication. Students worked together to design locally tailored solutions to global challenges, fostering an intercultural learning experience that challenges and provides an alternative to the inequitable flow of information often seen in modern-day education and research 2 . Figure 1 . Structure of the Planetary Health and Climate-Resilient Health Systems (PHCRHS) virtual classroom utilizing collaborative online international learning (COIL) between the Philippines and the Netherlands. The COIL component was structured to meet both institutions’ needs: a stand-alone part-time extracurricular certificate course for Filipino students and an integrated project within an existing full-time curricular accredited course for Dutch students. The instructional team comprised of educators from both countries. UMC Utrecht spearheaded logistics and the provision of online modules, while St. Luke’s PGHP recruited Filipino students, provided administrative support, and offered in-person mentorship. Student experience and feedback During the pilot course, eight Dutch and 15 Filipino students collaborated in four teams on self-identified topics: eco-anxiety, environmental impacts of fast fashion, healthcare waste management, and decolonizing global health. A routine course evaluation was conducted, supplemented by an informal course review discussion held with students in which they expressed strong appreciation for the opportunity to collaborate with peers internationally. Students also expressed that they gained deeper insights into planetary health issues and appreciated the varied local solutions required to address global problems. The final presentations demonstrated that students had indeed gained a nuanced and contextualized understanding of the glocal nature of planetary health problems and solutions. For example, healthcare waste management is a global issue, but solutions vary by context. In the Netherlands, high-efficiency recycling facilities may be prioritized, while the Philippines might focus on community-based waste segregation and decentralized treatment facilities. Here, each student’s contextual expertise was essential ( Figure 2 ). Thus, this course also provided an experiential learning opportunity to understand what “just transition” means in the climate discourse - recognizing that each region has distinct economic and infrastructural constraints, necessitating tailored approaches to achieve environmental and social sustainability suitable for differing contexts 12 . Figure 2 . Venn diagram illustrating glocal solutions for sustainable hospital waste management, comparing approaches from the Philippines and the Netherlands, based on student presentations and discussions during the course. NGOs = Non-governmental organizations. Moreover, students noted that the course enabled them to experience bidirectional learning, countering the dominant stereotype of a unidirectional flow of knowledge and the role of the ‘expert’ from the North to the South. To help foster a safe online learning environment, the course began with an intercultural, international and interdisciplinary collaboration workshop, setting the foundation for respectful and effective group work. 10 Through this approach, the course facilitated the exchange of diverse experiences and promoted collective understanding. Such experiences help challenge social prejudices and implicit biases 10 . The bidirectional knowledge exchange also challenged conventional hierarchies in academia, contributing to efforts to decolonize planetary health education and foster equitable international collaborations 2 . This model can be adapted to other educational contexts, enabling institutions to promote glocal collaboration with greater inclusivity for learners from both the Global North and Global South. Additionally, the course introduced students to potential career paths in planetary health, including roles in education and medicine. Notably, the first author (DJC) was a participant in this pilot course and now contributes to its succeeding editions as a staff member. Fittingly, these kinds of experiential learnings have been identified as an important didactic element of transformative education 3 . Lessons learned The course’s innovative design combined asynchronous and synchronous activities with a glocal approach, requiring students to develop context-specific interventions for shared planetary health challenges. Such models are increasingly being adopted by universities exploring COIL, 10,11 underscoring their potential to promote equitable, sustainable and impactful education. This pilot course demonstrated the feasibility and effectiveness of a virtual, intercultural learning environment, offering important lessons for health professions educators worldwide. Glocal education models can break down barriers between high- and low-resource contexts, promoting equitable access to knowledge, intercultural competency development and leadership opportunities. Participating faculty expressed that the experience enhanced their competence in intercultural communication, international collaboration, and online teaching, as well as allowing them to learn from each other’s distinct teaching approaches. This educational project also revealed to the teaching staff that virtual learning across time zones is feasible. Next steps Moving forward, the spirit of co-creation, coupled with a commitment to constant improvement, must continue through this glocal virtual clasroom. Suggestions for improvement include maximizing the use of interactive websites during lectures and providing weekly topic synthesis. Future iterations could also expand the course to include more countries, facilitating broader intercultural collaboration. Time-zone coordination and language diversity remain key challenges, requiring improvements in interactive tools and integration between asynchronous and synchronous content. Should more countries and cultures be included, one limitation is that English will likely remain the primary language of instruction. To mitigate this, the teaching team will strive to incorporate cultural and intellectual diversity in course content. As educators continue to innovate, institutional support is essential to sustain and scale up promising educational modalities like this glocal virtual classroom. This institutional support should include an ecouragement to embed research into these educational innovations, to strengthen structured learning and support future scale-up. By fostering equitable access to knowledge and leadership opportunities, such initiatives can empower learners and leaders in planetary health, regardless of their geographic or economic background. This pioneering virtual classroom model can serve as a blueprint for a new wave of educators seeking to develop creative, inclusive, and impactful programs that advance planetary health education in high- and low-resource settings alike. References 1. Whitmee S, Haines A, Beyrer C, et al. Safeguarding human health in the Anthropocene epoch: report of The Rockefeller Foundation–Lancet Commission on planetary health. The Lancet . 2015;386(10007):1973-2028. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(15)60901-12. Redvers N, Faerron Guzmán CA, Parkes MW. Towards an educational praxis for planetary health: a call for transformative, inclusive, and integrative approaches for learning and relearning in the Anthropocene. Lancet Planet Health . 2023;7(1):e77-e85. doi:10.1016/S2542-5196(22)00332-13. Hart EJ, de Heer-Koster MH, van der Harst M, Browne JL, Scheele F. Key tips to shift student perspectives through transformative learning in medical education. BMC Med Educ . 2025;25:202. doi:10.1186/s12909-025-06754-24. Guzmán CAF, Aguirre AA, Astle B, et al. A framework to guide planetary health education. Lancet Planet Health . 2021;5(5):e253-e255. doi:10.1016/S2542-5196(21)00110-85. Yasobant S, Daptardar M, Kurup KK, et al. One (vis-à-vis Planetary, Eco) health: A landscape analysis of educational programs. Public Health Chall . 2022;1(4):e24. doi:10.1002/puh2.246. Floss M, Vieira Ilgenfritz CA, Rodrigues YE, et al. Development and Assessment of a Brazilian Pilot Massive Open Online Course in Planetary Health Education: An Innovative Model for Primary Care Professionals and Community Training. Front Public Health . 2021;9. doi:10.3389/fpubh.2021.6637837. Gepp S, Jung L, Wabnitz K, et al. The Planetary Health Academy—a virtual lecture series for transformative education in Germany. Lancet Planet Health . 2023;7(1):e68-e76. doi:10.1016/S2542-5196(22)00253-48. Planetary Health Initiatives | Real-World Learning. CFHI. Accessed February 18, 2025. https://www.cfhi.org/cfhi-planetary-health-initiative/9. Zeinali Z, Bulc B, Lal A, et al. A roadmap for intergenerational leadership in planetary health. Lancet Planet Health . 2020;4(8):e306-e308. doi:10.1016/S2542-5196(20)30171-610. Naicker A, Singh E, Tonnie Van Genugten. Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL): Preparedness and experiences of South African students. Innov Educ Teach Int . 2022;59(5):499-510. doi:10.1080/14703297.2021.189586711. Monteiro K, Davy C, Maurier J, Smith KF. Planetary Health—Global Environmental Change and Emerging Infectious Disease: A New Undergraduate Online Asynchronous Course. Challenges . 2023;14(3):36. doi:10.3390/challe1403003612. Stevis D, Felli R. Planetary just transition? How inclusive and how just? Earth Syst Gov . 2020;6:100065. doi:10.1016/j.esg.2020.100065 Information & Authors Information Version history V1 Version 1 04 March 2025 Copyright This work is licensed under a Non Exclusive No Reuse License. Keywords decolonization planetary health transnational education Authors Affiliations Dianne Jaula Cunanan 0009-0002-6688-1528 Saint Luke's College of Medicine View all articles by this author Julia Addison Universitair Medisch Centrum Utrecht View all articles by this author Camilla Alay Llamas Universitair Medisch Centrum Utrecht View all articles by this author George S. Downward Universitair Medisch Centrum Utrecht View all articles by this author Joyce Browne L Universitair Medisch Centrum Utrecht View all articles by this author Renzo R. Guinto [email protected] SingHealth Duke-NUS Global Health Institute View all articles by this author Metrics & Citations Metrics Article Usage 342 views 157 downloads .FvxKWukQNSOunydq8rnd { width: 100px; } Citations Download citation Dianne Jaula Cunanan, Julia Addison, Camilla Alay Llamas, et al. Pioneering a Glocal Virtual Classroom for Planetary Health. Authorea . 04 March 2025. DOI: https://doi.org/10.22541/au.174108858.85991247/v1 If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download. For more information or tips please see 'Downloading to a citation manager' in the Help menu . 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