Summary: Disaster medicine sits at the crossroads of health, environmental systems, and societal infrastructure. However, these domains often operate in silos, limiting their collective impact on disaster preparedness, response, and recovery. This submission examines how the Johns Hopkins Institute for Planetary Health and the Planetary Health Alliance are fostering a transdisciplinary approach to disaster medicine, integrating insights from diverse sectors to address systemic drivers of risk. By using Planetary Health as a unifying framework, the Johns Hopkins Institute for Planetary Health has aligned research, education, and operational strategies with the interconnected challenges of climate change, biodiversity loss, and human vulnerability. Key initiatives include fostering collaborations between public health, environmental science, engineering, and policy stakeholders to design cohesive and scalable disaster management practices. This framework has resulted in innovative applications, such as incorporating biodiversity conservation into disaster risk reduction strategies and embedding sustainability principles into recovery processes. These approaches not only strengthen disaster resilience but also emphasize equity and sustainability, ensuring that solutions are impactful and inclusive. The success of this approach demonstrates that bridging silos can transform disaster medicine into a more effective and comprehensive discipline. By fostering a culture of transdisciplinary collaboration and innovation, universities can play a critical role in advancing disaster medicine to meet the complex challenges of the 21st century. This submission highlights the potential for Planetary Health to act as a catalyst for unifying efforts across sectors, providing a replicable model for other institutions seeking to align their disaster medicine programs with global sustainability and resilience goals.
Christopher Lemon (Sun,) studied this question.