Policies & FAQs

Please note all materials created by the Planetary Health Alliance are registered in the Creative Commons under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license attributed to Johns Hopkins University as of 2025. This license allows for these projects to be shared as widely as possible while also protecting them from distribution without adequate credit or for commercial purposes. More information about CC licenses can be found here: https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/cclicenses/

Regarding the content that the Planetary Health Alliance shares, PHA follows guidelines established by the secretariat host institution, Johns Hopkins University, reproduced here:

Before we accept your user-generated photos, audio, or video, please review this page.

By [submitting shareable content to PHA], you certify that:

1. You produced the content yourself and have the right to share it

2. You have permission from anyone appearing in the photos or video to share the content

3. You give Johns Hopkins University [and Planetary Health Alliance] the right to use your content

4. You have read and agree to the legal language below which contains more detailed information about this release.

Photography, Audio, and Video Release

I, the individual identified in the form linking to this site (“Creator/Donor”), hereby releases all rights to, and gives, donates, assigns, conveys, transfers and delivers to Johns Hopkins, irrevocably, unconditionally and without any restriction of any kind, all right, title and interest, including copyright in the submitted photograph(s), audio recording(s), and/or video recording(s) to allow Johns Hopkins to use such photographs, video recordings and/or audio recordings (the “Works”) by any method or device now known or devised in any media throughout the world. This grant is perpetual. I agree that I shall have no right of approval and no claim to compensation hereunder.

Creator/Donor represents and warrants that prior to this release Creator/Donor had good and merchantable title to the Works, that the Works are being transferred free and clear of all debts, liens, claims, charges, restrictions, and any other encumbrances or liabilities whatsoever, and that Creator/Donor has the authority to transfer the Works as set forth in this Release. Creator/Donor waives all rights to compensation, royalties, or attribution, and understands that the Works may be used by Johns Hopkins by any method or device now known or devised in any media throughout the world. Creator/Donor acknowledges that they received permission, from all individuals in the Works, to allow Johns Hopkins to use the Works.

By submitting content using Johns Hopkins University [or Planetary Health Alliance] content submission forms, the Creator/Donor acknowledges they have read and agree to this Release.

PHA requires this signed release when submitted photos or videos include a recognizable person, a visible human face, or an illustration based on a real person. A release must be received from all recognizable individuals in the image. If the subject is under age 18, the release must be completed by a parent or legal guardian.

Release Form (PDF 150KB)

The Planetary Health Alliance has adopted the following definition: 

“Planetary Health is a solutions-oriented, transdisciplinary field and social movement focused on analyzing and addressing the impacts of human disruptions to Earth’s natural systems on human health and all life on Earth.”

The Rockefeller Foundation–Lancet Commission on Planetary Health, which framed the field in 2015, defined Planetary Health as “the achievement of the highest attainable standard of health, wellbeing, and equity worldwide through judicious attention to the human systems—political, economic, and social—that shape the future of humanity and the Earth’s natural systems that define the safe environmental limits within which humanity can flourish. Put simply, Planetary Health is the health of human civilization and the state of the natural systems on which it depends.”

Planetary Health is focused on the health of humanity as it is affected by planetary-scale environmental change, which is known as the Earth Crisis.  We now understand that problems which have been framed for decades as “environmental”—air pollution; biodiversity loss; chemical pollution; climate change; resource scarcity; land use change; nutrient overloading; and marine degradation—are, in fact, creating a global health and humanitarian crisis. Environmental change has reached a scale in that it is driving a significant fraction of the global burden of disease across the world. The transdisciplinary field of Planetary Health has emerged to address these health dimensions of human-caused environmental change on a planetary scale.  

Introductory resources are available to view and share.