Board of Directors

Our Board

Board of Directors

Meet our international PHRC Board of Directors, responsible for overseeing the development of the PHRC as we transition to a non-profit organisation.

Karly Hampshire is an internal medicine resident at Columbia interested in infectious disease and pursuing a career at the intersection of medical education, climate change, and health. As a medical student inspired by the power of youth advocacy in global movements, Karly founded the Planetary Health Report Card Initiative in 2019 and served as its Co-director (2019-2022) and Partnerships Co-chair (2022-2023). Her experience with climate education led her to serve as the 2022 Medical Students for a Sustainable Future Curriculum Chair and a co-lead of the Climate Resources for Health Education initiative. She was a 2022 Switzer Fellow and was also awarded the Emerging Physician Leader Award from Health Care without Harm for her Interview without Harm Initiative, an advocacy, research, and educational campaign urging decisionmakers to prioritize sustainability and equity in evolving decisions about the future of medical training interviews post-COVID. Her climate work has been published in academic journals including Lancet Planetary Health, Academic Medicine, and BMJ and media outlets including Al Jazeera, the Huffington Post, and the Boston Globe. Karly earned her B.S. in Anthropology & Human Biology from Emory University and her M.D. from the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine.

Hannah is currently undertaking GP training in Severn Deanery, based in the Swindon region. She is passionate about increasing teaching on Planetary Health and Sustainable Healthcare within medical and broader health professional education. Hannah has been on the leadership team of the PHRC since 2020 in various roles including UK lead, Co-director (2020-22), parternships chair and interdiscipliary coordinator. In recognition of this work she won the ASME New Leader Award. Hannah is also currently working with the General Medical Council (GMC), alongside PHRC colleagues, to increase commitment by the GMC to Planetary Health including content of the topic in their education policy documents. The first stage of this is their publication of a position statement on Planetary Health Education in July 2024. Finally, Hannah continues to teach medical students in her role as a Teaching Associate for Green Templeton College, Oxford University.

Dr SanYuMay Tun has an international presence in bringing Education for Sustainable Healthcare and Planetary Health into core health professions education. She has a background in medicine as a former family physician, in environmental science and policy, and in medical education.

SanYuMay is a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. She chairs the sustainability and global health cross-cutting track at AMEE the international association for health professions education, and is on the Planetary Health Alliance steering committee and the GCCHE coordinating committee. She is a longstanding Advisor to the international student-led Planetary Health Report Card.

At the University of Oxford SanYuMay leads Education for Sustainable Healthcare, in the strategic role of providing leadership and inspiration to integrate ESH and Planetary Health across the medical school. She is a Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford.

In the UK Dr Tun established the Medical Schools Council ESH Alliance, having led the development of ‘Education for Sustainable Healthcare – A curriculum for the UK’ which was endorsed and published by the MSC and listed by the UK medical regulator as supporting its required outcomes for graduates. This curriculum has also informed Planetary Health and ESH curricula in other health professions, postgraduate training, and in countries around the world.

Cecilia Sorensen, MD is the Director of the Global Consortium on Climate and Health Education at Columbia University, Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine at Columbia Irving Medical Center and Associate Professor of Environmental Health Sciences at Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University. As a physician-investigator at the nexus of climate change and human health, translating research into policy, clinical action, and education to build resilience in vulnerable communities is the focus of her research. Her recent work has spanned domestic as well as international emergent health issues related to climate change, including, extreme heat, degraded air quality, extreme weather events, emerging infectious diseases, women’s health, and worker health. Dr. Sorensen is a member of the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change and serves on the National Academy of Medicine Action Collaborative for Decarbonization of the U.S. Health Sector. She is the co-editor of the textbook Climate Change and Human Health: From Science to Practice.

Dr. Potter is deeply committed to climate change and planetary health education including membership in the Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments, and membership on the American Academy of Nursing Environment and Public Health Expert Panel. She is a member of the Coordinating Committee of Columbia University’s Global Consortium on Climate and Health Education and a Fellow in the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota. She is a member of the Steering Committee of the Planetary Health Alliance. She currently serves on the National Academy of Medicine’s Action Collaborative on Decarbonizing the US Health Sector, the Health and Medicine Division of the National Academies, and the newly launched Climate Crossroads committee of the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine. Dr. Potter is the inaugural director of the Center for Planetary Health and Environmental Justice at the School of Nursing University of Minnesota.

Our Board