Paleofire Data for Public Health Nursing Wildfire Planning: A Planetary Perspective

This article looks at how public health is becoming increasingly threatened by global warming, land use, and changing wildfire patterns that shape vegetation type, structure, and biodiversity and ultimately affect ecosystem services and therefore, society.

The article looks at how public health nurses routinely work with people living in communities affected by wildfires, and they provide care such as health assessment, referrals to health and social services, education, shelter care, case management, disease surveillance, screening, vaccination, and collaborative planning. New cross-disciplinary perspectives and collaborations to inform and implement more effective strategies to address threats to population health are urgently needed. Planetary health is a cross-disciplinary perspective that explains how humans and natural systems are connected and how the exploitation of ecosystems and natural resources anywhere is damaging to the health of the planet.

It also looks at Planetary health and how this will require a cross-disciplinary social and scientific movement that aims to protect and improve the health of the planet and all its inhabitants. With emphasis on the fact that understanding past wildfire events can help determine effective adaptive strategies for future public health nursing services that support planetary health.