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Project introduction and background information

Planetary Health Challenges (PHCs) like climate change, loss of biodiversity, pollution, and socioeconomic inequalities present serious threats to the health of both present and future generations. To confront these pressing environmental and health issues, higher education must equip upcoming professionals to effectively respond to and foresee PHCs. It is vital to integrate innovative reasoning and problem-solving approaches, such as systems thinking and futures thinking, into social sciences and engineering programs to develop the necessary capacity for addressing these challenges. To bridge this gap, the project "Transdisciplinary Education for Future Social Entrepreneurs and Engineers Tackling Planetary Health (2025-2026)" builds on the project "Pathways to Planetary Health (2024-2025)" to co-design and implement educational resources at VU-UT. An overarching goal is to unite a transdisciplinary team of educators (product designers, engineers, and anthropologists) and hundreds students from both universities to enhance curriculum development using the Planetary Health Education (PHE) Framework. The project uses project-based learning and involves over 400 undergraduate and postgraduate students across four educational programmes, working on real-world PHCs. It collaboratively creates a the playbook “Systems Design Approach to Planetary Health” along with a Interactive Participatory Modelling Tool aimed at effectively addressing PHCs. The findings offer insights into transdisciplinary teaching and recommendations for improving course design and content. Furthermore, these findings will guide future research and educational practices within the field of PHE.

Objective and expected outcomes

Design for Planetary Health (D4PH) aims to create systemic solutions that tackle the complex and interconnected relationships between human-induced environmental changes (e.g., climate change), their effects on natural systems, and the resulting implications for human health and well-being across various levels. This study examines the implementation of a D4PH methodology grounded in the Planetary Health Education (PHE) Framework (GuzmĂĄn et al., 2021), the Framework for Systems Design Approaches to Complex Societal Problems (da Costa Junior et al., 2019), and the Ways of Thinking Framework for Engineering Education Research (Dalal et al., 2024) within an educational context (VU-UT). The research aims to investigate how students from social sciences and engineering engage with a design method based on the aforementioned theoretical frameworks to tackle real-world Planetary Health Challenges (PHCs). The project's objectives are:

  1. Curriculum Development on Planetary Health: To collaboratively design and integrate planetary health concepts into undergraduate and graduate courses at VU-UT, fostering a comprehensive understanding of the climate-health nexus among students.
  2. Promote Transdisciplinary Learning: To adopt a transdisciplinary approach to teaching and learning that encourages students from various disciplines to participate in collaborative real-world problem-solving, thereby enhancing their capacity to tackle the complexities of contemporary societal challenges such as PHCs.
  3. Develop Innovative Educational Resources: To collaboratively develop a handbook and participatory tool for Design for Planetary Health (D4PH), which serves as a practical resource for educators and students, facilitating the adoption of a transdisciplinary approach to teaching and learning about complexity within social science and engineering education.
  4. Evaluate and Disseminate Findings: To analyse the effectiveness of the implemented educational resources, providing insights and recommendations for future research and teaching practices in planetary health education at VU-UT and beyond.
  5. Promote Research and Education Collaboration: To facilitate meaningful collaboration between students and academic staff from VU-UT on relevant topics in the domain of PH.

Results and learnings

The propose initiatives aim to improve understanding and engagement with Planetary Health through a series of educational activities and resources at VU-UT. These efforts target undergraduate and graduate students across various faculties and programmes, fostering innovative learning experiences and supporting curriculum development and integration.

Anticipated results:

  1. Educational initiatives focused on Planetary Health impacting over 400 undergraduate and postgraduate students across three different educational programmes at VU-UT:
  2. Course Improving Planetary Health: A Learning Lab for Social-Entrepreneurship (2026) for 2nd-year Bachelor students from social science-related programs at the Faculty of Social Sciences (VU); Course Create the Future (2025) for graduate students of the Master of Industrial Engineering and Master of Interaction Technology (UT); Course Introduction to Humanitarian Engineering (2025) for graduate students of the Master of Humanitarian Engineering (UT).
  3. A handbook on “Designing for Planetary Health and Human Well-being”  aimed at young social entrepreneurs and engineering students from the Faculty of Social Science at VU and the Faculty of Engineering Technology at UT.
  4. A Tool for Participatory Sense-Making & Sharing for Planetary Health (Creative Commons Licenses), tailored for Social Sciences and Engineering Education.
  5. Recommendation and educational resources for Planetary Health Education integration in the New Curriculum of the Bachelor’s in Industrial Design Engineering:
  6. Course Design for Transitions (2026) for 3rd-year bachelor students of the new (curriculum) Bachelor in Industrial Design Engineering at the Faculty of Engineering Technology (UT);
  7. Submission of a journal manuscript detailing the project results.

Practical outcomes

da Costa Junior, J., Perera, D., Chemweno, P., & Muftugil Yalcin, S. (2025, September 8). NEXTGEN4PH - Transdisciplinary Education for Future Social Entrepreneurs and Engineers Tackling Planetary Health. Responsible Societies Community Day, Amsterdam. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17104996