Journal of General Internal Medicine, Robert McLean and Hardeep Singh, 25 July 2025

Professional Responsibilities for Planetary Health Stewardship

In a sociopolitical environment that challenges progress in addressing climate change, physicians should play a central role in accelerating activities related to climate action, environmental sustainability, and resilience. For instance, stewardship as a physician’s professional responsibility should include proactive and consistent planetary health steward ship versus a solely reactive and intermittent response to the increasing intensity and frequency of climate-related catastrophic events.

We define planetary health stewardship as optimizing physician decision-making to include considerations around the interdependent relationship between human health and the environment, recognizing the need for physicians and their professional societies to address social, economic, and environmental factors that impact human well-being. Its implementation requires physicians to be equipped with the knowledge, skills, and competencies of planetary health stewardship, a culture that enables more holistic consideration of health and its relationship to the natural environment, and supportive systems.