Summer School Planetary Health 2025
Call for application
This year's Summer School will take place from Sept 11 - Sept 20, 2025.
Call for application is open until June 1st!
We welcome 35 international participants with diverse professional backgrounds.
Past participants were from the fields of:
- public health
- nutrition
- pharmacology
- medicine
- physiotherapy
- education
- biogeochemistry
- midwifery
- anthropology
- geography
- veterinary medicine
- dentristry
- health promotion
- psychology
- health economics
- nursing
- environmental studies
- biology
- economics
- and more!
Past participants came from Afghanistan, Austria, Gambia, Germany, Italy, Kenya, Lebanon, Nigeria, Poland, Tanzania ...
We will share perspectives from Eastern Africa as well as Europe and explore different global as well as local challenges in the context of climate change and other planetary boundaries. By applying a planetary health lens the aim is to identify solutions for mitigation and adaptation relevant in European and African contexts but also beyond.
Why do we offer our Summer School on Planetary Health?
Our well-being is heavily dependent on healthy and resilient ecosystems, however, the impact of human disruptions on earth and climate change is severely affecting all living species. Planetary Health is studying these interactions, asking for collaboration across disciplines to address climate change and to develop and apply strategies to safeguard our health.
The Summer School does not only aim at educating participants on planetary health concepts and the interconnections and interdependences between human health, the environment and ecosystems but focuses on teaching how to acquire practical skills to address planetary health challenges. It is is a solution-oriented, transdisciplinary event willing to contribute to societal change.
Therefore, developing an own project idea tackling a self chosen planetary health issue is a core element of the course. Its intention is to empower participants, and to increase their confidence in taking collective transformative action.
The Summer School offeres a mix of educational methodologies and activities inside and outside the classroom with local and international experts, empowering participants to become agents of change and develop their own projects for transformative change. The aim of the Summer School is to help participants gain and develop knowledge, attitude, skills and confidence.
The aim of the Summer School is for participants to
- explore different topics from a planetary health perspective, such as nutrition, biodiversity, agriculture, mobility, sustainable health care, heat and urban planning, ethics, and many more,
- get inspired by good practice examples in a variety of settings,
- develop communication skills to engage with different stakeholders and trigger change,
- develop their own ideas and projects,
- develop their own transformative potential and become an agent for change in climate change mitigation, adaptation and planetary health whereever they study, work, and live,
- build a strong network for collective transformation with other agents for change.
The Summer School is organized by the University and the University Hospital of Würzburg, the Catholic University for Health and Allied Sciences (CUHAS) Mwanza, Tanzania and the University of Eldoret (UoE), Kenya in cooperation with the German Alliance Climate Change and Health e.V. (KLUG) and the Else Kröner Center Würzburg-Mwanza. It is part of the project SOPHEA (Strengthening One Health and Planetary Health In Eastern Africa), a project running 2022-2025 with many different (educational) activities in Eastern Africa, funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD).
2025 programme will be published soon. Until then, check out our programme of 2024.
To gain a deeper understanding of planetary health we recommend to have a look at the final report of the Lancet Commission on Planetary Health from 2015 and yearly updates of the Lancet Countdown on Climate Change and Health
We also strongly encourage you to watch the videos from our webinar series of 2024!
In previous years, the webinar series was part of the Summer School, but we have now decided to offer the webinar series before, to allow more time for project work inside the Summer School. It is of importance to familiarize yourself with the major concepts before you come in September, and partipicipating in the webinar series is a great opportunity!
Please send your letter of motivation, CV and the concept note of your project idea until June 1st to planetaryhealth@ukw.de.
What is the concept note?
We ask all applicants to apply with your own project idea that aspires to trigger transformative action. This idea might be a project you are already working on or a new idea that you feel inspired to bring to life. Throughout the Summer School, we will continue to develop these ideas and make them more concrete, so they can become real projects. There will be mentors and group wisdom to support you on this journey.
What matters to us, is that the idea is feasible for you. Pick something that you care about and that you can have an impact on. For guidance how to choose a project and write your concept note, please use this document.
Participation is free of cost, including lunch and refreshments during breaks and expenses for excursions.
Not covered are travel costs to Würzburg, Germany, and accomodation.
As seats are limited, we reserve the right to select participants based on the applications. We have to raise a cancellation fee of 80 Euros for cancellations after August 1st, in order to be fair to those people on the waiting list.
We are trying to minimize the carbon footprint of our Summer School as best as we can. We discourage you from flying to the Summer School, as airplane travel is associated with a huge amount of carbon emissions. The Summer School is primarily aimed at participants from all over the world currently residing in Europe, other educational activities of the SOPHEA project take place in Eastern Africa or online. However if you still decide to fly, we encourage you to compensate for the carbon emissions, find more information here.
From Würzburg Main Train Station to the University Hospital Würzburg
After your arrival at Würzburg Main Station, the university hospital can be reached within 15 minutes by tram. After leaving the station building, keep to the left to get to the tram stop "Hauptbahnhof Ost". At the tram stop watch out for tram "Line 1 or 5" heading to "Grombühl". Trams usually arrive every 5 min on weekdays and every 10 min on Saturdays. For more detailed information about the tram schedules, look out for information at the tram stops. To get to the Lehrklinik at the University Hospital leave the tram at tram stop "Uni-Klinikum Bereich D". Then turn right into Josef-Schneider-Straße and go a bit downhill. You will see the main gate (Josef-Schneider-Str. 2) at the opposite side of the street. Once you have passed the car barriers keep walking straight through the small gate and still straight until you find the entrance to building D5 on your right.
You will be responsible for your accomodation in Würzburg, you can find some options here. One inexpensive option among others is the youth hostel in Würzburg. If you would like to get in touch with other participants to look for joint accomodation after you have been accepted for the Summer School, and agree for us to share your contact information with other participants, please indicate this in your application.
Free lunch will be served as well as refreshments during the breaks, on some nights dinner will be included.
Watch this 10-minute video from our colleagues the Planetary Health Alliance at John Hopkins University for a short introduction to the concept of Planetary Health:
