|
A collaborative network
for Planetary Health
for Planetary Health
People, Places, Purpose, Planet
|
~ We are now part of the Nova Network, a transdisciplinary global community providing evidence, inspiration, and advocacy for the health and flourishing of all people, places, and planet ~ |
|
Our Mission:“To transform the health of individuals, communities, and the planet through deeper understanding of the interdependence of all systems and by promoting awareness, attitudes, and actions required for meaningful, collaborative change.”
|
|
Who are are
The Nova Network is an initiative of the Nova Institute for Health and welcomes anyone trying to make a difference in the world—including researchers, creatives, advocates, community organizers, educators, clinicians, policymakers, and young people, across the arts and sciences—to co-create a culture of belonging for meaningful progress
Our agenda
|
We seek to underscore the connections between personal, environmental, economic, social, and spiritual health—and awareness that our current global planetary health challenges are intertwined. We promote holistic and integrated perspectives for novel solutions and values that promote cultural change.
|
What planetary health means to us:
“The interdependent vitality of all natural and human made systems, including the attitudes, values, and collaborative actions that promote flourishing of all people, places, and our planet.” We are a proud member of the Planetary Health Alliance |
Our affiliated journalChallenges is an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed, open access journal that welcomes contributions to any problem, or any aspect of the “grand challenges” facing our world and our societies today. It addresses the pressing need to accelerate integrated cross-sectoral discourse toward collaborative solutions to improve every aspect of life on our planet. It provides a key avenue for the Nova Network to share diverse and original research, perspectives, and viewpoints, including the “Nova Interview” with leading experts from different fields.
|
|
What we do
- We create new opportunities for collaborative discourse, ideas, and action—to engage rich expertise, integrate research, encourage diverse perspectives, and nurture relationships for creative solutions.
- Our events include international conferences, virtual “campfire” discussion forums, and in-person workshops, retreats, and other events.
- We have ongoing real-time engagement and dynamic interaction on the Nova Integration Hub, the Nova Institute’s web-based forum (to be launched in November 2022) that provides a platform for knowledge sharing, nourishing activities, and mentoring connections for early career researchers.
Progress through cultural change
The Nova Network encourages a culture of mutualism, trust, and authenticity to generate new opportunities through collaboration, ingenuity, and creativity for meaningful growth and shared benefits across all scales—beginning at the grassroots. We seek to normalize and place greater value on wisdom, empathy, kindness, hope, love, creativity, and respect—the deeper values that unite, empower, and refocus priorities of individuals and groups towards shared solutions.
Our PrinciplesFrom the 2018 Canmore Declaration on principles for planetary health:
Improving the health of all natural and anthropogenic systems depends on: mutualistic values; planetary consciousness; advocacy; unity of purpose; recognition of biopsychosocial interdependence; emotional bonds between people and the land; efforts to counter elitism, social dominance and marginalization; meaningful cross-sectoral and cross-cultural narrative; self-awareness; and a personal commitment to shaping new normative attitudes and behaviors. This is the basis of the inVIVO Principles for Planetary Health:
|
|
Our history:
In 2012, Professor Susan Prescott, MD, PhD, founded a new initiative that called for creative, integrated, ecological solutions for the health of all systems at all scales as a transdisciplinary response to the Worldwide Universities Network’s Global Challenges. Known as inVIVO Planetary Health, its members were among the first to provide evidence that the ecology of the early environment—including microbial diversity, nutrition, toxins, nature relatedness, social interactions, and early life adversity—has life-long and transgenerational implications for all aspects of well-being and resilience.
The Nova Network was created in 2022 and is a realization of the decades-long outreach efforts of both the Nova Institute for Health and inVIVO Planetary Health. Recognizing the importance of collective actions and an expanded reach based on values, wisdom, and relationships, inVIVO Planetary Health and the Nova Institute began working closely together in 2020. The inVIVO initiative sunset in November 2022 when it became part of the Nova Network, which is directed by Susan Prescott.
The Nova Network was created in 2022 and is a realization of the decades-long outreach efforts of both the Nova Institute for Health and inVIVO Planetary Health. Recognizing the importance of collective actions and an expanded reach based on values, wisdom, and relationships, inVIVO Planetary Health and the Nova Institute began working closely together in 2020. The inVIVO initiative sunset in November 2022 when it became part of the Nova Network, which is directed by Susan Prescott.
To restore human health we must restore the health of our society and our relationship with the natural environment
– with a greater sense of unity, place and purpose”
We can all contribute to the
important questions of our time
How can we live with all of our modern technology but also take advantage of what once was? How can we promote health through biodiversity and connection with natural environments? What are the obstacles to change? What are the consequences of continuing on our current trajectory? Can a change in social values systems have a flow on effect that can drive meaningful positive change across multiple domains? And reduce inequality and injustice?