Student Spotlight

Completing the Planetary Health Report Card (PHRC) for the Skaggs School of Pharmacy at the University of Montana was uniquely challenging and rewarding. My peer, Soraya Hobart, and I completed our school’s second PHRC this most recent spring semester and it was truly an eye-opening experience!  I am glad to have had the opportunity to work on another PHRC for UM to help highlight our strengths and opportunities for improvement. I hope to see my pharmacy school continue on its path to improving planetary health and sustainability measures through opportunities within Missoula and through pharmacy curricula.

 

Why is the PHRC important?

 

I believe that the PHRC is important because it provides a regular and thorough check of all the sustainability measures occurring in my pharmacy school, in the pharmacy curriculum, and on campus. If the PHRC is completed every year or two, it allows for a visualization of any progress that has been made. It also makes it easier for other students or faculty to quickly learn about what measures we currently have and where we are potentially lacking. Eventually, the documents will become a part of the history of the pharmacy school and provide future students the ability to reflect upon where we came from and hopefully see how much we have grown and developed.

 

What did it take for you to complete the PHRC for your school?

 

Between my peer and I working on the PHRC in our free time, it took about 1 month to collect all of the relevant information needed for the PHRC, 1 month to write up the report and calculate scoring, and a couple of weeks for editing and finalizing for submission. There were many emails, conversations, and rabbit holes of information to sift through in order to put the entire thing together. Splitting up the work allowed us to be relatively efficient about the process and it was fun to report to each other our findings after talking to different departments on campus.

 

What did you learn?

 

I learned of initiatives on campus and within the community that I previously had never known about. I also learned of areas that could be improved in the future–for example, I was very surprised at the lack of sustainability initiatives in the laboratories on campus and within the pharmacy school, as this was an area that I was expecting the school to already have some form of sustainability or “green” initiatives or protocols established.

 

What should other students and faculty know about the PHRC? Would you recommend this experience? Why?

 

The PHRC is a great project for students and faculty curious about sustainability on their campus. It provides an opportunity to learn so much about measures and initiatives occurring directly at your university or in your local community. The conversations that will occur to complete the report will connect you with so many others who will be eager to assist you and share what information they have. I would certainly recommend that students and faculty at other pharmacy schools try to complete the report because it will be eye-opening, interesting, and allow for more sustainability doors to be opened on your campus and at your pharmacy school in the future.