ABSTRACT
This chapter explores SDG 3, which aims to ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for people of all ages. While SDG 3 incorporates many key indicators of human health, it does not account for planetary health, a determining factor of the long-term health and well-being of human populations. This chapter argues that in the transition to a low-growth society, we need to look critically at health systems and find ways to limit the ecological footprint of health care. It will also be important to expand support to initiatives that build health across multiple social-ecological scales (e.g. the health of soil microbes, human bodies, communities, and the planet as a whole). Such approaches do not necessarily emerge within the health care sector, and can include social movements that shift meaning frameworks and create innovative ways of living that build resilience in populations. The chapter uses examples of soil health, care farming, and family care for mental health to further these points.
