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Dr Christopher Golden: Planetary Health & Human Wellbeing
Event info
The Center for Jackson Hole presents
Dr. Christopher Golden: Planetary Health & Human Wellbeing
Followed by The 2019 SHIFT Awards
Wednesday, October 16 from 2-5PM
The Center Theater
Get tickets here.
How can intact environments benefit human health? Dr. Christopher Golden, an ecologist and epidemiologist at Harvard, explores this through his research in planetary health. Planetary health is an emerging field that encompasses a wide “range of domains including nutrition, mental health, infectious disease, and non-communicable diseases.”
Using his long term case study research in Madagascar and the South Pacific as a lens, Dr. Golden will open the 2019 SHIFT Festival with a presentation on planetary health and ” the human health impacts of rapid environmental change”.
About The SHIFT Awards:
Each year, The SHIFT Awards highlight the most innovative, impactful and replicable work currently underway at the intersection of outdoor recreation, conservation and public health. This series of presentations by SHIFT Award Official Selections will outline the business case for nature as medicine, as well as the ways nature contact is being integrated in communities around the country.
About Dr. Golden:
Dr. Christopher Golden is an ecologist and epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and an explorer and fellow at National Geographic. His research investigates the nexus of trends in global environmental change and human health. He received his BA from Harvard College where he created his own curriculum integrating courses in ecology, medical anthropology and development studies. He then received two graduate degrees from UC Berkeley: an MPH in Epidemiology with a focus in Nutrition, and a PhD in Environmental Science, Policy, and Management focusing his studies in wildlife ecology and ecosystem services.
Since 1999, Dr. Golden has been conducting environmental and public health research in Madagascar where he created a local research organization called MAHERY (Madagascar Health and Environmental Research). In the local language, “mahery” means strength and this organization has been the sole research organization operating in Madagascar’s largest remaining tract of rainforest. This group supports 20 field staff and he has trained nearly 25 Malagasy university students in field research methods.
Over the past several years, he has served as lead investigator on several research efforts: 1) the investigation of terrestrial wildlife declines in Madagascar on food security and human nutrition; 2) the investigation of marine fishery collapses in Madagascar (and across the globe) on food security and human nutrition; and 3) intervention analyses to determine solutions to wildlife harvest unsustainability and local health