By Giorgia Dalla Libera Marchiori
Very often, I believe, many of us find ourselves on paths that we are unhappy with or where we sense that something is missing - as privileged as the path we are on might be. And asking ourselves, “Is this really what I want to do? Is this really who I want to be?” is a privilege in and of itself. Not everyone can choose their path or decide to leave it. This expression of our unequal system is part of why I am where I am today.
I have been privileged enough not just to be able to ask those questions to myself but to find a way to act following their answer. In late 2015, almost ten years ago, I started my journey in biomedical science, and for years, I thought my future was being a ‘lab rat’ - I say this proudly. But a voice inside me was not so convinced.
Beyond studying and working in the biomedical field, I began to engage with people and projects with a broader understanding of health. I worked for many years with a small Swedish NGO, the Swedish Organization for Global Health. Their mission is to create a world free of health inequities, and their vision is centered on prevention rather than cure.
However, I still thought that to be a ‘real scientist,’ I needed to put those years of biomedical training to fruition. What would happen if I gave that all up? I did not know, but the voice inside me became louder and louder.
While working as a researcher in infectious diseases, doing the type of biomedical work I was ‘supposed’ to do to help those suffering in the Majority World - I began to question global health practices and embrace the decolonization movement. I became very uncomfortable with my infectious diseases scientist role, knowing that my white Western privileged position was perpetuating a colonial system of extractivist knowledge and paternalism.
Words like equity, system change, prevention, and climate emergency started to spin like a vortex in my head constantly. This cyclone made me question if what I was doing could make a difference in a system built to favor some at high costs for the majority and the planet. The urgency of climate change was crushing, and as the dots started to connect, I met people who finally put a name on the type of work I wanted to contribute to – planetary health.
Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit. With my lab work on hold, I started reading about the implications of our obsession with GDP (Gross Domestic Product) growth for health and equity, about the idea that the economy should serve us – not the other way around. That inequities are not inevitable, and that exploiting our planet to exhaustion for profit cannot be simply solved by innovations. I learned that people in health sciences and economics need to talk with each other. I realized that if I wanted to improve people’s health, especially in the Majority World and among the disadvantaged in society, I needed to understand and tackle the root causes of the multi-faced global health crisis rather than simply addressing its symptoms.
Many health issues, such as the recent pandemic, obesity, malnutrition, cancer, and respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, are just symptoms, and putting plasters on those wounds will not cure them. The work needs to be done upstream. I recognized that we need to tackle the consumptogenic system - the web of institutions, policies, commercial activities, norms, and behaviors that encourage and reward excessive production and consumption of fossil fuel-reliant goods and services, driving the health crisis as well as the environmental and inequities crises.
That’s when I burst out of my silo and decided to become a system-thinking professional. In the last few years, I have grappled with the complexity of such a change. On a personal level, I had to accept that I would never be a biomedical scientist – looking fabulous in a white lab coat, who knows the nitty-gritty details of one specific bug; the type of scientist I used to admire. I am still struggling with that at times.
On a professional level, I had to embrace the fact that I cannot know everything in depth. I should know and understand a bit of everything to have a good overview of the system and its positive or negative feedback loops. In a world built for siloed professionals, I took on the challenge of being transdisciplinary.
Nevertheless, for the first time in almost a decade, I fully feel that I am where I should be. I finally found my place in this world. My current work is part of a more extensive team effort to understand the consumptogenic system and find leverage points to shift to a system driven by planetary health equity, ‘the equitable enjoyment of good health in a stable Earth system.’ And I want my future career, in or out of academia, to stay connected to that.
I must thank many people who helped me get where I am. People who, with or without knowing, have enabled me to broaden my horizons, given names to things I had in my head for a long time but couldn’t verbalize, mentored me, listened without judgment, and challenged me. My journey to and with planetary health equity would have been impossible without other human beings, especially many other women leaders.
Community, connections, shared passions, values, and ideas are what we need to achieve planetary health equity and go through this complex and, at times, daunting journey of addressing the 21st-century polycrisis. Don’t be scared to burst the bubble - on the other side, you will find fellow humans who, like you, choose this messy but fulfilling path.
About the author - Giorgia Dalla Libera Marchiori is a PhD candidate at the Planetary Health Equity Hothouse. Her PhD investigates health philanthropy’s research agenda and its implications for achieving planetary health equity. Originally trained as a biomedical scientist, Gio worked with various non-profit organizations focused on global health and sustainability. Gio participated in the WLPH digital leadership academy in 2022.
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