Population Health and Environment

[UPDATED JULY 2016] Population, health and environment (PHE) projects work to deal with the relationships between people, the environment, and public health. In integrating those subjects, the goals are to improve health, encourage communities to engage in sustainable practices, and preserve the natural resources and ecosystems. This quote from the Pathfinder International site explains this […]

— September 17, 2014

[UPDATED JULY 2016] Population, health and environment (PHE) projects work to deal with the relationships between people, the environment, and public health. In integrating those subjects, the goals are to improve health, encourage communities to engage in sustainable practices, and preserve the natural resources and ecosystems.

This quote from the Pathfinder International site explains this connection:

Across the world, the hope for sustainable and equitable development is being threatened by poor health and environmental degradation—particularly poor access to reproductive health care, needlessly destructive extraction of natural resources, and inadequate local governance structures. The resulting high rates of disease, maternal and child death and disability, irreparable harm to natural environments, pressure on food systems, and the loss of local livelihood undermine the quality of human life everywhere. The urgency and interconnectedness of these challenges require integrated solutions—such as the global development approach known as Population, Health, and Environment (PHE).

In this Trending Topic, we present a set of materials that shows how practitioners conceptualize and implement PHE integration in the field, and what kinds of tools they use at the community level to achieve ‘value added’. We encourage you to register on our site and contribute your own project materials or useful tools in order to enrich this collection.


Additional Resource – Hot Off the Press!

PHE is a field still in development, and peer reviewed literature on the value added of the approach is just now emerging. We are pleased to be able to present to you a link to a paper recently released:

The Impact of Population, Health, and Environment Projects: A Synthesis of the Evidence, 2015 – This reportsynthesizes the available research from the latest generation of population, health, and environment (PHE) projects, providing a detailed account of the benefits of integrated projects and gaps in the evidence base.


Banner Photo: © 2009 Samarendranath Mandal, Courtesy of Photoshare