Innovative garden-based planetary health preclinical elective for medical students

Climate change impacts human health, which is increasingly being integrated into undergraduate medical curriculum. We developed an 8-week preclinical elective introducing first-year medical school students to the connections between soil health, human health, and planetary health. Two key innovations of the course include incorporating hands-on learning by having students help maintain a community garden and also building in dedicated time for written reflection. After course completion, three cohorts of students ( n =20) reported they could more effectively communicate the connections between human, soil, and planetary health as one unified subject. This course also spawned new student initiatives on planetary health after the class. Our garden-as-classroom course model may provide insight on how various pedagogical strategies complement each other in the implementation of planetary health in the undergraduate medical curriculum.