Universities are uniquely positioned to lead the response to the planetary health crisis, which is the #1 challenge of all times to the human enterprise. Still, most institutional engagements remain fragmented across faculties and limited to academic publications.
The original Planetary Health Report Card, developed at the University of California San Fransico (UCSF, 2019) and used by over 100 health professional schools in 18 countries, demonstrated how a student-led benchmarking tool can drive real institutional change. However, it’s application so far has been confined to medical and health professional schools.
Building on a recent paper by Kort, Ossebaard, Martens and Gupta (submitted for publication, 2026), this course develops an upgraded, complementary instrument in order to extend its usage: an institutional planetary health scorecard for an entire university. Where the original report card focuses on health professional education, the extended, new scorecard is explicitly designed for a university-wide self-assessment, spanning all faculties and centrally coordinated activities. It introduces 21 metrics across five action pathways: Education Reform, Research Design, Policy Engagement, Private Sector Partnerships, and Public Engagement & Citizen Science. Each metric elaborates the paper's roadmap into a measurable institutional commitment.
Students will work in five interdependent teams. One team critically evaluates and refines the 21 metrics into a validated rubric. Two teams apply the validated rubric to score VU Amsterdam and the University of Amsterdam through document analysis and stakeholder interviews. A fourth team builds an interactive website to visualize results. The fifth team prepares a manuscript and outreach toolkit so that other institutions can adopt the instrument. Inspired by guest lecturers from each of the five pathways, students will move from concept to deliverable in six weeks.
This problem-based, co-creative approach turns the classroom into a working laboratory for institutional change. Final deliverables - a validated institutional scorecard, two completed assessments, a live website, a draft manuscript and a public presentation to the Executive Board - will be presented at a closing event in the Groote Museum of ARTIS. The best may win the notorious VU Planetary Health Award.
This course has originally been developed in co-creation with experts and honours students during a module called ‘Rebuilding Education’ (2022-2023). This year’s version is designed to recur annually, with each new group of honours-students updating the assessment and tracking the progress of VU Amsterdam over time.
For more information and course details, go to 'Curriculum' at the top of the page.