2020 Meeting

Welcome to inVIVO 2020

We are excited to be holding our 9th annual conference of inVIVO Planetary Health in collaboration with the KIT Royal Tropical Institute and ARTIS Micropia—the world's first microbe museum. We will also be working closely with the Amsterdam Sustainability Institute and VU University Amsterdam.

Themes

Our meeting theme “Rewilding Spaceship Earth: from Microbes to Mammoths, Music and More”, underscores the imperative for creative ecological solutions for the challenges we face in all systems and all scales with advancing global urbanization – for personal, environmental, economic and societal health alike. Our agenda continues to address strategies to overcome global ‘dysbiotic drift’ – life in distress - on every level, bringing together diverse perspectives from across many dimensions of the arts and the sciences, as we explore novel solutions and new normative values.

This continues to reflect our focus on understanding and improving the complex relationships between human health and planetary health. We seek to emphasize the eco-biological interactions in our living environment (including urbanization, food systems, education, social inequity, climate change, biodiversity loss, and microbial ecology) impact physical, mental and spiritual well-being, together with the wider community and societal factors that govern these. We continue to have a long-range vision which includes trans-generational and ‘life-course’ approaches to disease prevention and environmental restoration.

The meeting will bring together a tremendous network of like-minded people from diverse fields whose interests span from planetary/population/ environmental health to microbial ecology/ systems biology and the deep biological mechanisms—all aiming to work ‘symbiotically’ to connect traditional ‘silos’ through a more integrated systems framework as we seek to improve personal, environmental, economic and societal health alike.

Our meetings are always highly interactive with as much emphasis on meaningful collaborations and productive friendships as on the data and opportunities we generate. It is our privilege and pleasure to welcome you to Amsterdam!

Our sessions will cover diverse perspectives and we invite abstracts across many topics.

Lifestyle health and Personal Ecology: including nutrition, activity, sleep, mindfulness, and other behaviors (and/or interventions) that influence personal ecology and wellness
The Health of Societies and Systems: including the wider social, cultural and economic determinants of health, epidemiology, anthropology, and public health.
The Health of Environments on all scales: including natural and built environments, any and all dimensions of the ‘total exposome’ and interventions to improve these, including approaches to ‘rewilding’.
Microbial Systems: Including microbiome ecosystems in humans, animals, diverse environmental systems, impact of human activity, antibiotics, and possible restorative interventions.
Developmental Origins: including work that specifically focus on developmental approaches, early interventions, life course trajectories and transgenerational perspectives
Value Systems and Ideologies: including pathways, programs, philosophies, enablers, perspectives, mindsets and/or actions that promote personal, community, and/or planetary health
Tools and Platforms: including technology platforms, novel tools, statistics or models to facilitate research and/or health initiatives in any sector.
Creative work: if you would like to share or display something you have created to inspire the group please do!

Key dates

Pre-conference workshops--will begin at ARTIS on June 17
The Main Scientific Conference—will run at KIT from June 18 through June 20 with some activities also at ARTIS (a short walk away), including a visit to Micropia.
A Public Planetary Health Festival—will run at ARTIS from June 19 through June 21. This public event is intended to promote concepts of planetary health more widely, and we are planning some shared activities (such as a public lecture at the ARTIS Planetarium).