Care for the planet: Why planetary health is family and community medicine
13 Aug 2026
By Jake Bryan S. Cortez, MD, FPAP
(Editor's note: this article appeared in the 1st issue of MIMS Doctor magazine, 2026, in partnership with the Philippine Academy of Family Physicians, Inc. [PAFP].)
In family and community medicine (FCM), patterns often reveal themselves slowly. A child who returns repeatedly with dengue. An elderly patient whose breathing worsens during certain weeks of the year. A family that struggles to follow lifestyle advice because their surroundings make healthy choices difficult.
Taken one by one, these encounters seem routine. Seen over time, they begin to tell a larger story.
Planetary health names what family physicians have long recognized: People cannot be healthy if the environments in which they live are unhealthy. It is not an added responsibility for family physicians. Rather, it provides a clear framework for work we already do, preventing disease, addressing social and ecological determinants of health (Figure 1), preparing communities for shocks and stresses, promoting healthy lifestyles, and advocating for safer living conditions. It helps us apply these efforts more deliberately and consistently in everyday care.
Figure 1. Human-caused environmental disruptions and the resulting impacts on human health(Health Alliance. [2024, December 26]. Special Report: Planetary Health in Asia. Medium).
What family physicians in the Philippines are already seeing
Across the Philippines, family physicians manage infectious diseases whose patterns are closely linked to environmental conditions. Seasonal surges of dengue are now a familiar part of practice, shaped by rainfall patterns, urban density, and waste management. After flooding, whether from major typhoons or increasingly frequent localized events, cases of leptospirosis and diarrheal illness predictably rise. These conditions disproportionately affect children, older adults, and families living in overcrowded or underserved communities. These are populations central to FCM practice.
Non-communicable diseases reflect similar environmental influences. Poor air quality aggravates asthma and chronic lung disease, while prolonged heat exposure increases cardiovascular risk, particularly among older adults and outdoor workers. Built environments that limit safe physical activity and access to affordable, healthy food contribute to obesity, hypertension, and diabetes. When we advise patients to “exercise more” or “eat better” without acknowledging unsafe streets, extreme heat, or food insecurity, our counseling risks being clinically sound but practically unattainable.
Environmental change also leaves a substantial mental health footprint. Recurrent disruptions, whether from typhoons, flooding, or drought affecting livelihoods, erode a sense of stability and control. Anxiety, depression, trauma-related symptoms, and a growing sense of loss are increasingly evident in consultations, even outside acute disaster settings. As trusted first-contact providers with longitudinal relationships, family physicians are often the first to recognize this quieter suffering.
Taken together, these experiences show that planetary health is not confined to disasters. It is embedded in routine consultations, follow-up visits, and community work. Often it is unlabeled, but it is deeply familiar.
Planetary health fits the DNA of FCM
The core values of FCM align naturally with planetary health. Prevention has always been foundational. Planetary health extends prevention upstream to the environmental conditions that shape risk long before disease develops. Continuity of care allows family physicians to see how environmental exposures accumulate across the life course and even across generations. Community orientation grounds care in real places, real people, and real constraints.
Equity and social accountability further bind FCM to planetary health. Environmental harms rarely affect populations equally. Communities with fewer resources bear a disproportionate burden of pollution, climate-sensitive diseases, and livelihood disruption. Addressing these inequities reinforces, rather than redefines, what it means to be a family physician in the Philippines.
From awareness to practice: the C.A.R.E.S. approach
Planetary health can feel broad and overwhelming. For family physicians, it becomes manageable when translated into familiar professional roles. The CARES approach offers a practical way to integrate planetary health into everyday practice, without adding complexity.
Clinical practice
Planetary health begins in routine clinical encounters. In FCM, this means incorporating key environmental exposures into standard history-taking, such as heat, air quality, housing conditions, water safety, and recent flooding or displacement, alongside familiar social and medical factors. Preventive counseling can then be tailored to context, for example, by recommending safer times or locations for physical activity during extreme heat or poor air quality. Lifestyle medicine naturally complements this approach, aligning individual wellbeing with environmental co-benefits.
At the clinic level, FCM practices can assess their readiness for climate-related disruptions (Figure 2), such as flooding, power outages, or supply interruptions, to ensure continuity of care. Practical guidance is available through the Climate Resilience Toolkit for Health Clinics developed by Americares in collaboration with the Department of Health (DOH).
Figure 2. Climate change-related impacts on health and health systems (Howard C et al. Lancet Planet. Health. 7(3):e251–e264).
Advocacy
Advocacy in FCM is an extension of patient and community care. It is grounded in the recognition that many health problems are shaped by conditions beyond individual control. For those seeking a conceptual entry point, the TEDx talk Planetary Health: Towards a Thriving People and Planet offers a clear, health-centered framing that situates advocacy within professional responsibility rather than politics.
Within PAFP chapters and training institutions, family physicians are encouraged not only to participate, but to lead environmental innovations in clinical and community settings. This includes climate-resilient clinic practices, environmentally informed community programs, mentorship in sustainable healthcare, and advocacy for disaster preparedness and healthy, walkable communities. Exemplary efforts are recognized through the PAFP Pag-Asa Awards, while PAFP’s partnership with Health Care Without Harm Southeast Asia anchors advocacy in evidence-based approaches to sustainable healthcare.
Research
Family physicians are uniquely positioned to generate evidence grounded in community realities. Planetary, environmental, and climate-related health priorities are explicitly recognized in the National Research Agenda. This recognition creates opportunities for practice-based research, quality improvement initiatives, and systematic documentation of climate-sensitive conditions that can inform policy and health system responses.
There is also a pressing need to embed planetary health, environmental health, lifestyle medicine, and sustainability considerations in the PAFP clinical practice guidelines and clinical pathways. This alignment ensures consistent, high-quality care across FCM practice.
Education
Education sustains long-term change in FCM. Physicians routinely educate patients, families, students, trainees, and colleagues. This makes education a natural entry point for planetary health integration. Patient education that links health advice to environmental context, such as heat, air quality, or food systems, makes recommendations more realistic and actionable.
At the professional level, structured learning opportunities are available through global and regional initiatives, including those coordinated by the Planetary Health Alliance. In the Philippine context, the PAFP–MIMS Planetary Health Champion Certification Course provides a concrete pathway for family physicians who wish to deepen competencies and serve as leaders in clinical practice, education, and community engagement. At the systems level, PAFP committees are currently updating the Basic Medical Education and Residency Training Program curricula to deliberately integrate planetary health.
Sustainability
Sustainability makes planetary health visible and credible in everyday FCM practice. Family physicians can align clinic operations with guidance from the DOH Climate Change and Health Office and adopt profession-led standards such as the Ten Commandments of an Eco-Friendly Clinic issued by the Philippine Medical Association (Figure 3).
Figure 3. The Ten Commandments of an Eco-Friendly Clinic issued by the Philippine Medical Association.
These standards emphasize achievable actions already familiar in clinical settings. Examples include maximizing natural light and ventilation, using energy-efficient appliances, practicing proper waste segregation, reducing paper use, preferring reusable materials, and promoting healthy, plant-based food choices. Together, these measures strengthen clinic resilience, improve patient and staff wellbeing, and demonstrate professional leadership.
Moving together as a profession
PAFP has begun to institutionalize planetary health through the work of the Special Interest Group on Planetary Health. Community-based activities such as plogging (fitness activity that combines jogging or walking with picking up litter) and tree-planting promote environmental stewardship. Educational and advocacy initiatives, including the conduct of a Planetary Health Pledge, create shared spaces for reflection, collective learning, and public affirmation of commitment among family physicians nationwide.
Planetary health is not the work of a few advocates. It is a shared professional responsibility. Engagement does not require perfection or specialized expertise. It begins with small, context-appropriate steps that, taken together, strengthen the health of our patients, communities, and health system.
A familiar calling, named anew
FCM has always cared for people in context. Planetary health asks us to widen that context, to include the environmental systems that sustain life and health. Caring for the planet is inseparable from caring for our patients, their families, and their communities.
The question before us is no longer whether planetary health belongs in FCM. It is how deliberately we choose to practice it—small acts can create big impacts. The invitation is clear: Start where you are, do what you can, and move forward together, for the health of both the people and the planet.
Sources: 1. Health Alliance. (2024, December 26). Special Report: Planetary Health in Asia. Medium. https://phalliance.medium.com/special-report-planetary-health-in-asia-84ad3688aa13. 2. Howard, C., MacNeill, A. J., Hughes, F., Alqodmani, L., Charlesworth, K., de Almeida, R., Harris, R., Jochum, B., Maibach, E., Maki, L., McGain, F., Miller, J., Nirmala, M., Pencheon, D., Robertson, S., Sherman, J. D., Vipond, J., Yin, H., & Montgomery, H. (2023). Learning to treat the climate emergency together: Social tipping interventions by the health community. The Lancet Planetary Health. 7(3):e251–e264. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2542-5196(23)00022-0
(Editor's note: this article appeared in the 1st issue of MIMS Doctor magazine, 2026, in partnership with the Philippine Academy of Family Physicians, Inc. [PAFP].)
In family and community medicine (FCM), patterns often reveal themselves slowly. A child who returns repeatedly with dengue. An elderly patient whose breathing worsens during certain weeks of the year. A family that struggles to follow lifestyle advice because their surroundings make healthy choices difficult.
Taken one by one, these encounters seem routine. Seen over time, they begin to tell a larger story.
Planetary health names what family physicians have long recognized: People cannot be healthy if the environments in which they live are unhealthy. It is not an added responsibility for family physicians. Rather, it provides a clear framework for work we already do, preventing disease, addressing social and ecological determinants of health (Figure 1), preparing communities for shocks and stresses, promoting healthy lifestyles, and advocating for safer living conditions. It helps us apply these efforts more deliberately and consistently in everyday care.
Figure 1. Human-caused environmental disruptions and the resulting impacts on human health(Health Alliance. [2024, December 26]. Special Report: Planetary Health in Asia. Medium).
What family physicians in the Philippines are already seeing
Across the Philippines, family physicians manage infectious diseases whose patterns are closely linked to environmental conditions. Seasonal surges of dengue are now a familiar part of practice, shaped by rainfall patterns, urban density, and waste management. After flooding, whether from major typhoons or increasingly frequent localized events, cases of leptospirosis and diarrheal illness predictably rise. These conditions disproportionately affect children, older adults, and families living in overcrowded or underserved communities. These are populations central to FCM practice.
Non-communicable diseases reflect similar environmental influences. Poor air quality aggravates asthma and chronic lung disease, while prolonged heat exposure increases cardiovascular risk, particularly among older adults and outdoor workers. Built environments that limit safe physical activity and access to affordable, healthy food contribute to obesity, hypertension, and diabetes. When we advise patients to “exercise more” or “eat better” without acknowledging unsafe streets, extreme heat, or food insecurity, our counseling risks being clinically sound but practically unattainable.
Environmental change also leaves a substantial mental health footprint. Recurrent disruptions, whether from typhoons, flooding, or drought affecting livelihoods, erode a sense of stability and control. Anxiety, depression, trauma-related symptoms, and a growing sense of loss are increasingly evident in consultations, even outside acute disaster settings. As trusted first-contact providers with longitudinal relationships, family physicians are often the first to recognize this quieter suffering.
Taken together, these experiences show that planetary health is not confined to disasters. It is embedded in routine consultations, follow-up visits, and community work. Often it is unlabeled, but it is deeply familiar.
Planetary health fits the DNA of FCM
The core values of FCM align naturally with planetary health. Prevention has always been foundational. Planetary health extends prevention upstream to the environmental conditions that shape risk long before disease develops. Continuity of care allows family physicians to see how environmental exposures accumulate across the life course and even across generations. Community orientation grounds care in real places, real people, and real constraints.
Equity and social accountability further bind FCM to planetary health. Environmental harms rarely affect populations equally. Communities with fewer resources bear a disproportionate burden of pollution, climate-sensitive diseases, and livelihood disruption. Addressing these inequities reinforces, rather than redefines, what it means to be a family physician in the Philippines.
From awareness to practice: the C.A.R.E.S. approach
Planetary health can feel broad and overwhelming. For family physicians, it becomes manageable when translated into familiar professional roles. The CARES approach offers a practical way to integrate planetary health into everyday practice, without adding complexity.
Clinical practice
Planetary health begins in routine clinical encounters. In FCM, this means incorporating key environmental exposures into standard history-taking, such as heat, air quality, housing conditions, water safety, and recent flooding or displacement, alongside familiar social and medical factors. Preventive counseling can then be tailored to context, for example, by recommending safer times or locations for physical activity during extreme heat or poor air quality. Lifestyle medicine naturally complements this approach, aligning individual wellbeing with environmental co-benefits.
At the clinic level, FCM practices can assess their readiness for climate-related disruptions (Figure 2), such as flooding, power outages, or supply interruptions, to ensure continuity of care. Practical guidance is available through the Climate Resilience Toolkit for Health Clinics developed by Americares in collaboration with the Department of Health (DOH).
Figure 2. Climate change-related impacts on health and health systems (Howard C et al. Lancet Planet. Health. 7(3):e251–e264).
Advocacy
Advocacy in FCM is an extension of patient and community care. It is grounded in the recognition that many health problems are shaped by conditions beyond individual control. For those seeking a conceptual entry point, the TEDx talk Planetary Health: Towards a Thriving People and Planet offers a clear, health-centered framing that situates advocacy within professional responsibility rather than politics.
Within PAFP chapters and training institutions, family physicians are encouraged not only to participate, but to lead environmental innovations in clinical and community settings. This includes climate-resilient clinic practices, environmentally informed community programs, mentorship in sustainable healthcare, and advocacy for disaster preparedness and healthy, walkable communities. Exemplary efforts are recognized through the PAFP Pag-Asa Awards, while PAFP’s partnership with Health Care Without Harm Southeast Asia anchors advocacy in evidence-based approaches to sustainable healthcare.
Research
Family physicians are uniquely positioned to generate evidence grounded in community realities. Planetary, environmental, and climate-related health priorities are explicitly recognized in the National Research Agenda. This recognition creates opportunities for practice-based research, quality improvement initiatives, and systematic documentation of climate-sensitive conditions that can inform policy and health system responses.
There is also a pressing need to embed planetary health, environmental health, lifestyle medicine, and sustainability considerations in the PAFP clinical practice guidelines and clinical pathways. This alignment ensures consistent, high-quality care across FCM practice.
Education
Education sustains long-term change in FCM. Physicians routinely educate patients, families, students, trainees, and colleagues. This makes education a natural entry point for planetary health integration. Patient education that links health advice to environmental context, such as heat, air quality, or food systems, makes recommendations more realistic and actionable.
At the professional level, structured learning opportunities are available through global and regional initiatives, including those coordinated by the Planetary Health Alliance. In the Philippine context, the PAFP–MIMS Planetary Health Champion Certification Course provides a concrete pathway for family physicians who wish to deepen competencies and serve as leaders in clinical practice, education, and community engagement. At the systems level, PAFP committees are currently updating the Basic Medical Education and Residency Training Program curricula to deliberately integrate planetary health.
Sustainability
Sustainability makes planetary health visible and credible in everyday FCM practice. Family physicians can align clinic operations with guidance from the DOH Climate Change and Health Office and adopt profession-led standards such as the Ten Commandments of an Eco-Friendly Clinic issued by the Philippine Medical Association (Figure 3).
Figure 3. The Ten Commandments of an Eco-Friendly Clinic issued by the Philippine Medical Association.
These standards emphasize achievable actions already familiar in clinical settings. Examples include maximizing natural light and ventilation, using energy-efficient appliances, practicing proper waste segregation, reducing paper use, preferring reusable materials, and promoting healthy, plant-based food choices. Together, these measures strengthen clinic resilience, improve patient and staff wellbeing, and demonstrate professional leadership.
Moving together as a profession
PAFP has begun to institutionalize planetary health through the work of the Special Interest Group on Planetary Health. Community-based activities such as plogging (fitness activity that combines jogging or walking with picking up litter) and tree-planting promote environmental stewardship. Educational and advocacy initiatives, including the conduct of a Planetary Health Pledge, create shared spaces for reflection, collective learning, and public affirmation of commitment among family physicians nationwide.
Planetary health is not the work of a few advocates. It is a shared professional responsibility. Engagement does not require perfection or specialized expertise. It begins with small, context-appropriate steps that, taken together, strengthen the health of our patients, communities, and health system.
A familiar calling, named anew
FCM has always cared for people in context. Planetary health asks us to widen that context, to include the environmental systems that sustain life and health. Caring for the planet is inseparable from caring for our patients, their families, and their communities.
The question before us is no longer whether planetary health belongs in FCM. It is how deliberately we choose to practice it—small acts can create big impacts. The invitation is clear: Start where you are, do what you can, and move forward together, for the health of both the people and the planet.
Sources: 1. Health Alliance. (2024, December 26). Special Report: Planetary Health in Asia. Medium. https://phalliance.medium.com/special-report-planetary-health-in-asia-84ad3688aa13. 2. Howard, C., MacNeill, A. J., Hughes, F., Alqodmani, L., Charlesworth, K., de Almeida, R., Harris, R., Jochum, B., Maibach, E., Maki, L., McGain, F., Miller, J., Nirmala, M., Pencheon, D., Robertson, S., Sherman, J. D., Vipond, J., Yin, H., & Montgomery, H. (2023). Learning to treat the climate emergency together: Social tipping interventions by the health community. The Lancet Planetary Health. 7(3):e251–e264. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2542-5196(23)00022-0