2025 Healthy People, Healthy Planet Speaker Series | Faculty of Health Sciences

Healthy People, Healthy Planet is a virtual speaker series designed for faculty, staff and learners in the Queen’s community to promote healthy behaviour with a focus on the intersection of lifestyle and planetary health to achieve optimal wellbeing. 

Everyone is welcome to register for one or all of these free, virtual presentations by internationally-renowned speakers:

View details on all sessions and presenters

Diet at the confluence of public and planetary health: The case to Carpe (and Ede) DIEM

March 26 at 12 – 1 p.m.

Learning objectives:

1. Understand the relationship between diet quality and both morbidity and mortality risk

2. Recognize the strengths and weaknesses of alternative means of dietary assessment

3. Appreciate the environmental impacts of diet

4. Know how specific foods contribute to both human and planetary health outcomes

Speaker: Dr. David Katz

Register

More consensus than controversy in nutrition

April 9 at 12 – 1 p.m.

Learning objectives:

1. Understand the usefulness of using the concepts of “Equipose”, “As intended” and “With/what/instead of what” to address controversy in nutrition and arrive at greater consensus

2. Identify the different popular dietary patterns that are most and least aligned with the intersection of human and planetary health

3. Appreciate the importance of the role of health science communication in driving and supporting successful behaviour change in dietary habits

Speaker: Dr. Christopher Gardner 

Register

Mechanisms of disease reversal utilizing plant-based nutrition

April 14 at 12 – 1 p.m.

Learning objectives:

1. Explores the reality of what a patient’s daily diet does to their body to largely create disease
    
2. Presents a therapeutic tool physicians can use to demonstrably reverse chronic disease in their patients
    
3. Changes the way medical students and clinicians see health and disease leading to more effective medicine being practices and a more satisfying career for physicians

Speaker: Dr. Michael Klaper 

Register

What does your body already know about healing stress? Somatic skills for self-regulation

April 17 at 12 – 1 p.m.

Learning objectives:

1. Learn the natural ways that your body is already able to restore a parasympathetic, healing state of calm and connectedness

2. Multiple-modalities including guided imagery, breath, gaze, soothing touch, and tapping will be taught in an experiential learning session

3. Climate psychology will also be integral to this discussion

Speaker: Dr. Christy Gibson 

Register

Lifestyle medicine for personal and planetary health

April 22 at 12 – 1 p.m.

Learning objectives:

1. Describe how human health is intertwined with planetary health

2. Explore how planetary disruptions, including climate change, threaten lifestyle medicine interventions

3. The practice of lifestyle medicine presents an opportunity to improve the health of individuals, communities, and the planet

4. Identify strategies to engage in behaviour change that protects human and planetary health

Speaker: Dr. Neha Pathak 

Register

PANEL: The practice and teaching of lifestyle medicine across Canada

May 7 at 12 – 1 p.m.

Learning objectives:

1. Discuss different care delivery models for lifestyle medicine in Canada

2. Discuss paradigm shift in medical practice such that emphasis is placed on prevention and reversal of chronic disease through intensive lifestyle intervention

3. Review continuing medical education opportunities for physicians and allied health care professions to improve competence and/or become certified in lifestyle medicine

4. Discuss initiatives for inclusion of lifestyle medicine in the teaching curricula for both undergraduate and postgraduate medical education

Speakers: Dr. Jasdeep Saluja, Dr. Brendan Byrne, Dr. Jules Cormier, Dr. Caroline Rhéaume, Dr. Rikin Patel, Dr. Maria Theodorou

Register