The importance of epistemology and translation for health and integration: A commentary on the special issue 'Integrative approaches to health'.

In this commentary on the J-AIM Special Issue 'Integrative Approaches to Health', we argue for plural narratives of health to balance and to reconnect human populations with their environments, to foster a renewed culture of health and wellbeing. Integration of our inner and outer ecosystems with pluralistic health systems requires 'movement' and 'change' and the special issue provides papers on integration and health from multiple disciplinary perspectives that study humans, non-human, animals, and plants in relation to clinical trials, individual and population studies and health systems. All these perspectives provide new insights to map integrative approaches in health, illness and wellbeing in times of the climate emergency. To ameliorate the biomedical and biopharmaceutical industries 'medicalisation of life' as the hegemonic and thus totalising human and more-than-human health systems and approach, the special issue acknowledges, situates and authorises broader visions and epistemologies of health and disease. These complementary epistemologies, their words, their movements (Ayu) and their health (Swastya) and balance (Soukya) are contained within indigenous health systems that include Ayurveda and Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) amongst a vast array of local health cultures across the globe. In contrast with the narrower approach of medicalisation; integrative, inclusive, plural and sustainable approaches to health involve the respect for a population's self-reliance in health (the 4th Tier) and the dignity of the Sanskrit word for health, 'Swastya' which means 'being rooted within'. These perspective and epistemologies will help to create a vision for health and health systems that encourage integration through the dignity of the individual (Atmasnman/Anubhuti), respect for the other (Pratiksa/Adara), trust in community (Nyasa) and the creation of systems of equity (Samata) and social justice for all (Nyaya).

Race and indigeneity in human microbiome science: microbiomisation and the historiality of otherness.

This article reformulates Stephan Helmreich´s the ¨microbiomisation of race¨ as the historiality of otherness in the foundations of human microbiome science. Through the lens of my ethnographic fieldwork of a transnational community of microbiome scientists that conducted a landmark human microbiome research on indigenous microbes and its affiliated and first personalised microbiome initiative, the American Gut Project, I follow and trace the key actors, experimental systems and onto-epistemic claims in the emergence of human microbiome science a decade ago. In doing so, I show the links between the reinscription of race, comparative research on the microbial genetic variation of human populations and the remining of bioprospected data for personalised medicine. In these unpredictable research movements, the microbiome of non-Western peoples and territories is much more than a side project or a specific approach within the field: it constitutes the nucleus of its experimental system, opening towards subsequent and cumulative research processes and knowledge production in human microbiome science. The article demonstrates that while human microbiome science is articulated upon the microbial 'makeup' of non-wester(nised) communities, societies, and locales, its results and therapeutics are only applicable to medical conditions affecting rich nations (i.e., inflammatory, autoimmune, and metabolic diseases). My reformulation of ¨microbiomisation of race¨ as the condition of possibility of human microbiome science reveals that its individual dimension is sustained by microbial DNA data from human populations through bioprospecting practices and gains meaning through personalised medicine initiatives, informal online networks of pseudoscientific and commodified microbial-related evidence.

Responding to the need of postgraduate education for Planetary Health: Development of an online Master's Degree.

Planetary Health has emerged as a new approach to respond to the existential risks that the clime and global environmental crises pose to human societies. As stated by various stakeholders, the challenges involved in Planetary Health are of such magnitude that education must be at the forefront to obtain a meaningful response. Universities and higher education institutions have been specifically called to embed the concept of planetary stewardship in all curricula and train the next generation of researchers and change makers as a matter of urgency. As a response to this call, the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF), and the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal) developed the first online and asynchronous Master in Science (MSc) in Planetary Health. The aim of the programme is to train a new generation of academics and professionals who understand the challenges of Planetary Health and have tools to tackle them. This article describes the development of the curriculum of this MSc, presents the main characteristics of the programme and discusses some of the challenges encountered in the development of the programme and its implementation. The design of this MSc was based on: the alignment of the programme with the principles for Planetary Health education with a focus on human health; a multi-, inter-, and trans-disciplinary approach; the urgency to respond to the Anthropocene challenges; and the commitment to the 2030 Agenda. The MSc was recognized as an official degree by the Agency for Quality of the Catalan University System, included in the European Quality Assurance Register for Higher Education, and the Spanish National Academic Coordination body in April 2021 and launched in October 2021. There are currently more than 50 students enrolled in the program coming from a broad range of disciplines and geographic locations. The information presented in this article and the discussion on challenges encountered in developing and implementing the programme can be useful for those working in the development of similar programs.