Where ecosystems, people and health meet: Academic traditons and emerging fields for research and practce

Abstract

Human-driven environmental change has brought atenton to the importance of ecosystems in sustaining human health and well-being. There are various schools of thought and fields of inquiry and acton that seek to understand health in relaton to linked social and ecological phenomena. We describe 18 such fields and outline common elements and incongruites among them. They converge around the applicaton of systems thinking and crossing disciplinary boundaries, while differences are found in methodologies, research foci and problem framing. Although fields encourage sustainable and equitable pathways for health promoton, depolitcized and ahistorical approaches contnue to be standard practce. Future research calls for a deeper commitment to examining ourselves as politcal actors, making space for conversatons around power dynamics, and (re)centering partcipants in research methodologies.