This news item from Cornell Research is about: nvironmental changes caused by human activity can significantly impact public health and wellbeing, but often these consequences are not clearly quantified or understood by policy-makers. Steven A. Osofsky, Population Medicine and Diagnostic Sciences, has worked with colleagues at Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health to launch a consortium, the Planetary Health Alliance (PHA), and an emerging field called planetary health, which seeks to improve understanding and apply appropriate metrics, regarding the public health impacts of human-caused environmental change. The goal is to inform decision-making in the realms of land- and ocean-use planning, environmental conservation, and public health policy.