During the 2019 Reading Week, the Faculty of Environmental Studies will offer an intensive “Ecohealth” course at York’s Las Nubes EcoCampus in Costa Rica. The ‘ecohealth approach’ or ‘ecosystem approach to health and well-being’ is an applied approach based on principles of systems thinking, transdisciplinarity, participation, gender and social equity, knowledge-to-action, and sustainability. In this course, participants will move from understanding environment and health relationships to apply these principles in the design of collaborative interventions that produce “co-benefits” – simultaneously improving human health / well-being and ecosystem health.

This is a useful course for students who are interested ecosystem/environmental management, international development practice, conservation, global health, environment and health, applied systems thinking, food sovereignty and security, participatory methods, social innovation, environmental problem solving, and more.

This Ecohealth course will focus on the case study of “linking heath, environment and community in the Alexander Skutch Biological Corridor”, with multiple field visits in the region. However, the projects that course participants will develop can be associated with any environment and health situation in any location.