London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

General welcome

We are very excited to welcome you to the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, and – in particular – to the MSc Climate Change and Planetary Health (CCPH). We, Pauline Scheelbeek and Pauline Paterson, are your Programme Directors, so you will be seeing a lot of us in the year(s) to come!

Our first virtual get together has been planned for Wednesday 23rd August. This webinar will be an opportunity for you to ask any questions that you may have. Subsequently, we will see each other in person in Welcome Week (25th–29th September).

A few of you have got in touch asking us about specific preparations for the year, so we have created a list of a few things to think about between now and September:

• Have a look at our reading list: below you will find the reading list for term 1, which will feature some core literature in the field of CC&PH. You are, of course, not expected to have read all of this before commencing the course, but it might be helpful to have a scan through, so you have a better idea of some of the main concepts in CC&PH. You will be able to access the content on the reading list through the LSHTM library when you join in September.
   
• Have a look at the course structure. For part-time students this might also help with planning your year, and identifying the courses that you would like to take in year.
   
• Contact us if there are any questions or queries that you want to discuss with us prior to starting the course.

As you are probably aware, you can proudly call yourself the very first cohort of CCPH students and, whilst we have an amazing MSc programme lined up for you, we are of course keen to learn from and with you this year. Please do not hesitate to contact us with any tips, suggestions, complaints etc, that could make your year with us even better.

We are looking forward to meeting you and starting the CCPH journey with you very soon!

With kind regards,

Pauline Scheelbeek & Pauline Paterson
Co-Programme Directors of the MSc Climate Change & Planetary Health

Welcome Week

Welcome Week timetable

Your first week at LSHTM will be the Welcome Week, in which you will be introduced to studying at LSHTM. You will receive lots of information about the School, the MSc Climate Change & Planetary Health and meet the Programme Directors, lecturers and tutors on the course. Furthermore, you will be introduced to each other. The week will also provide opportunities to follow various learning and study skills sessions.

Personal tutors

At LSHTM, each of our students will be allocated a personal tutor: this is a friendly academic with whom you can discuss your module options and progress and is your first point of contact for any other issues that may arise during the year. To facilitate the allocations of tutors, please complete the following questions and email them to the Programme Directors (Pauline.Scheelbeek@lshtm.ac.uk & Pauline.Paterson@lshtm.ac.uk):

1. What degree(s) have you completed prior to starting the MSc CCPH at LSHTM?
2. What is your background in Climate Change & Planetary Health?
3. Do you already know what field you would like to work in once graduated from LSHTM? If, so what field would this be?
4. Do you already have a topic in mind for your thesis project? If so, what would this be?
5. Would you be more comfortable with a male or a female tutor, or do you have no preference?
6. Is there anything else you think might be useful to know regarding your tutor allocation?

Pentacells

When you arrive at LSHTM, your Programme Director will invite you to participate in a Pentacell, an activity that strengthens the School community, increases our wellbeing and forwards our goal of improving global health. The idea is deceptively simple – five students meet weekly for five weeks and listen to each other’s ideas and perspectives. It’s not compulsory but is strongly recommended by our School's Director, Liam Smeeth, Programme Directors, Student Support Services and former students.

Feedback from previous students:

“It was nice to be able to connect with people on my programme that I wouldn't necessarily have spoken to otherwise and it was a good way to make friends at the beginning.”

“Our Pentacell group chose not always to follow the exact guidelines for each session, and instead focused more on getting to know members of our programme better. I enjoyed the Pentacell experience we had, as it helped develop interpersonal relationships with those on my programme.”

“It gave me an opportunity to meet people on my programme. It also helped me develop interpersonal skills.” 

“Very pleasant experience especially for me as an international student who moved to the UK for the 1st time.”

Term 1 & 2 modules and timetable

Term 1

Each module runs on the same day of the week for 10 weeks

	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
AM	Basic Statistics for Public Health & Policy	Basic Epidemiology	Environment, Health & Sustainable Development	Fundamentals of Climate Change & Planetary Health
PM	Issues in Public Health		Health Policy, Process & Power	Principles of Social Research	Methods in Climate Change & Planetary Health

Term 2

C1 (Mon - Wed morning) and C2 (Wed afternoon-Fri) for 5 weeks then D1 and D2 for the next 5 weeks.

C1 slot

• Research Design & Analysis 
• Study Design: Writing a Study Proposal

C2 slot

• Health Systems
• Statistical Methods in Epidemiology
• Population, Poverty & Environment

D1 slot

• Planetary Health in Practice (compulsory)

D2 slot

• Environmental Epidemiology (compulsory)

Reading list

Core textbook:

Haines A and Frumkin F (2021). Planetary Health: Safeguarding human health and the environment in the anthropocene. Cambridge University Press
 

Recommended reading on various topics in Planetary Health (in alphabetical order):

Burrows and Kinney. Exploring the Climate Change, Migration and Conflict Nexus. DOI: 10.3390/ijerph13040443 

Dasandi, Niheer, et al. "Engagement with health in national climate change commitments under the Paris Agreement: a global mixed-methods analysis of the nationally determined contributions." The Lancet Planetary Health 5.2 (2021): e93-e101.  

Jägermeyr, J., Müller, C., Ruane, A.C. et al. Climate impacts on global agriculture emerge earlier in new generation of climate and crop models. Nat Food 2, 873–885 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-021-00400-y 

Jones R, Reid P and Macmillan A (2022). “Navigating fundamental tensions towards a decolonial relational vision of planetary health”. Lancet Planetary Health 6(10): e834-e841. 

Lelieveld, K. Klingmüller, A. Pozzer, R. T. Burnett, A. Haines, and V. Ramanathan. Effects of fossil fuel and total anthropogenic emission removal on public health and climate. PNAS, 25 March 2019. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1819989116 

Manisalidis, I., Stavropoulou, E., Stavropoulos, A. & Bezirtzoglou, E. Environmental and Health Impacts of Air Pollution: A Review. Frontiers in Public Health 8, (2020). 

Mazhin SA, Khankeh H, Farrokhi M, Aminizadeh M, Poursadeqiyan M. Migration health crisis associated with climate change: A systematic review. J Educ Health Promot. 2020 Apr 28;9:97. doi: 10.4103/jehp.jehp_4_20. PMID: 32509905; PMCID: PMC7271932

Moysés SJ, Soares RC. Planetary health in the Anthropocene. Health Promot Int. 2019 Mar 1;34(Supplement_1):i28-i36. doi: 10.1093/heapro/daz012. PMID: 30753440.

Nemet, Gregory F., Tracey Holloway, and Paul Meier. "Implications of incorporating air-quality co-benefits into climate change policymaking." Environmental Research Letters 5.1 (2010): 014007. 

Redvers N, Celidwen Y, Schultz C, Horn O and Githaiga C (2022). “The determinants of planetary health: an Indigenous consensus perspective”. Lancet Planetary Health 6(2): e156-e163. 

Riaz, M. M. A., Wangari, M.-C. & Mugambi, J. K. No climate change justice in lieu of global authorship equity. The Lancet 401, 1074 (2023).

Rosenzweig, C. et al. Coordinating AgMIP data and models across global and regional scales for 1.5°C and 2.0°C assessments. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences 376, 20160455 (2018). 

Rossa-Rocor V, Giang A and Kershaw P (2021). “Framing climate change as a human health issue: enough to tip the scale in climate policy?” Lancet Planetary Health 5(8): e553-e559. 

Springmann, M. et al. Options for keeping the food system within environmental limits. Nature 562, 519–525 (2018).

Springmann, M. et al. The healthiness and sustainability of national and global food based dietary guidelines: modelling study. BMJ 370, m2322 (2020).

Steffen et al. Planetary boundaries: Guiding human development on a changing planet. DOI: 10.1126/science.1259855

Whitmee, S. et al. Safeguarding human health in the Anthropocene epoch: report of The Rockefeller Foundation-Lancet Commission on planetary health. The Lancet 386, 1973–2028 (2015).

Willett, W. et al. Food in the Anthropocene: the EAT–Lancet Commission on healthy diets from sustainable food systems. The Lancet 393, 447–492 (2019).
 

Recommended reading related to transferrable skills (in alphabetical order):

Bicchieri C, Lindemans JW, Jiang T. A structured approach to a diagnostic of collective practices. Front Psychol. 2014 Dec 5;5:1418. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01418. PMID: 25538666; PMCID: PMC4257103. 

GBD 2017 Diet Collaborators et al. Health effects of dietary risks in 195 countries, 1990-2017: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017. The Lancet 0, (2019).

Sarkis, J. Sustainable Transitions: Technology, Resources, and Society. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2019.08.018

Sarmiento Barletti, JP and Larson AM (2017). “Rights abuse allegations in the context of REDD+ readiness and implementation”. CIFOR Infobrief 190.  

Sherman MH and Ford J (2013). “Stakeholder engagement in adaptation interventions: an evaluation of projects in developing nations”. Climate Policy 14(3): 417-441. 
 

Websites and other useful resources (in alphabetical order):

Greener NHS: https://www.england.nhs.uk/greenernhs/  

R for Data Science: Import, Tidy, Transform, Visualize, and Model Data. https://r4ds.had.co.nz/  - free to view online  

RStudio Cheatsheets inc Data Visualization with ggplot2. https://posit.co/resources/cheatsheets/ - free to download online 

Page last updated September 2023