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Skin barrier structure and function is essential to human health. Hitherto unrecognized functions of epidermal keratinocytes show that the skin plays an important role in adapting whole-body physiology to changing environments, including the capacity to produce a wide variety of hormones, neurotransmitters and cytokine that can potentially influence whole-body states, and quite possibly, even emotions. Skin microbiota play an integral role in the maturation and homeostatic regulation of keratinocytes and host immune networks with systemic implications. As our primary interface with the external environment, the biodiversity of skin habitats is heavily influenced by the biodiversity of the ecosystems in which we reside. Thus, factors which alter the establishment and health of the skin microbiome have the potential to predispose to not only cutaneous disease, but also other inflammatory non-communicable diseases (NCDs). Indeed, disturbances of the stratum corneum have been noted in allergic diseases (eczema and food allergy), psoriasis, rosacea, acne vulgaris and with the skin aging process. The built environment, global biodiversity losses and declining nature relatedness are contributing to erosion of diversity at a micro-ecological level, including our own microbial habitats. This emphasises the importance of ecological perspectives in overcoming the factors that drive dysbiosis and the risk of inflammatory diseases across the life course.

In these regenerative times prompted by the Anthropocene, Aboriginal voices are situated to draw on ancient wisdom for local learning and to share information across the globe as ecological imperative for planetary wellbeing. In this paper, postqualitative research foregrounds the sentient nature of life as ancestral power and brings the vitality of co-becoming as our places into active engagement. It enables coloniality to surface and reveals how it sits in our places and lives, in plain sight but unnoticed because of its so-called common sense. Postqualitative research relates with ancient knowledges in foregrounding Country’s animacy and presence, revealing the essence of time as non-linear, cyclical and perpetual. In this way, we are places, weather and climate, not separate. Postqualitative research also relates with ancient knowledge in illustrating Country as agentic and time as multiple, free of constraint and directly involved in our everyday. Country is active witness in the lives of Aboriginal peoples, here always. This is a strong basis for decolonisation. We all have a responsibility to listen, to help create a new direction for the future in the present time.

Typhoid fever is endemic in Fiji, with high reported annual incidence. We sought to identify the sources and modes of transmission of typhoid fever in Fiji with the aim to inform disease control. We identified and surveyed patients with blood culture-confirmed typhoid fever from January 2014 through January 2017. For each typhoid fever case we matched two controls by age interval, gender, ethnicity, and residential area. Univariable and multivariable analysis were used to evaluate associations between exposures and risk for typhoid fever. We enrolled 175 patients with typhoid fever and 349 controls. Of the cases, the median (range) age was 29 (2-67) years, 86 (49%) were male, and 84 (48%) lived in a rural area. On multivariable analysis, interrupted water availability (odds ratio [OR] = 2.17; 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.18-4.00), drinking surface water in the last 2 weeks (OR = 3.61; 95% CI 1.44-9.06), eating unwashed produce (OR = 2.69; 95% CI 1.48-4.91), and having an unimproved or damaged sanitation facility (OR = 4.30; 95% CI 1.14-16.21) were significantly associated with typhoid fever. Frequent handwashing after defecating (OR = 0.57; 95% CI 0.35-0.93) and using soap for handwashing (OR = 0.61; 95% CI 0.37-0.95) were independently associated with a lower odds of typhoid fever. Poor sanitation facilities appear to be a major source of Salmonella Typhi in Fiji, with transmission by drinking contaminated surface water and consuming unwashed produce. Improved sanitation facilities and protection of surface water sources and produce from contamination by human feces are likely to contribute to typhoid control in Fiji.

Douville et al.’s interpretation of the global response to water security threats is that scientists and policymakers have underestimated the attention they deserve due to an ongoing focus on rising temperatures and the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events [2]. Schölvinck et al. demonstrate the outcomes and impacts possible from a growing number of water-related citizen science projects, and their value: “raising awareness, democratisation of science, development of mutual trust, confidence, and respect between scientists, authorities and the public, increased knowledge and scientific literacy, social learning, incorporation of local, traditional and indigenous knowledge, increased social capital, citizen empowerment, behavioural change, improved environment, health and livelihoods, and finally motivational benefits” [10]. [...]as part of an escalating trend in the recognition of relational understandings of our places and our planet, waterways are regarded as having agency.

Poor rural water quality is a health challenge in Fiji. A mixed-methods study in six iTaukei (Indigenous Fijian) villages was conducted to understand local perceptions of drinking water access and quality, how this changes drinking water source choices, and impacts of age and gender. Seventy-two household surveys, 30 key informant interviews (KIIs) and 12 focus group discussions (FGDs) were conducted. Household surveys revealed 41.7% of community members perceived their water as dirty and 76.4% perceived their water as clean. Two-thirds of households reported that they always or usually had enough water. FGDs and KIIs revealed water access and quality was influenced by population size, seasonality, and rainfall. Perceptions of water quality caused villages to shift to alternative water sources. Alignment of the qualitative and quantitative data identified four themes: sources and infrastructure, access, quality and contamination. There was mixed alignment of perceptions between access and quality between the household surveys, and KIIs and FGDs with partial agreement sources and infrastructure, and quality. Gender was found to influence perceptions of dirty water, contamination, and supply and demand. Perceptions of water quality and access shape decisions and choices for water sources and can be used to inform resilience and inclusive water strategies.

Ecology is both blessed and burdened by romanticism, with a legacy that is multi-edged for health. The prefix ‘eco-’ can carry a cultural and political (subversive) baggage, associated with motivating environmental activism. Ecology is also practiced as a technical ‘science’, with quantitative and deterministic leanings and a biophysical emphasis. A challenge for planetary health is to avoid lapsing into, or rejecting, either position. A related opportunity is to adopt ecological thought that offers a rich entrance to understanding living systems: a relationality of connectedness, interdependence, and reciprocity to understand health in a complex and uncertain world. Planetary health offers a global scale framing; we regard its potential as equivalent to the degree to which it can embrace, at its core, ecological thought, and develop its own political narrative.

Access to parks and green spaces within residential neighbourhoods has been shown to be an important pathway to generating better physical and mental health for individuals and communities. Early research in this area often failed to identify specific attributes that contributed to reported health outcomes, with more recent research focused on exploring relationships between health outcomes and aspects of access and design. A mixed methods research project conducted in Perth, Western Australia examined the role that neighbourhood green space played in influencing residents’ self-reported health status, and this paper identifies significant relationships found between perceptions of green space quality and self-reported health. It focuses on the factors that were found to be most positively associated with better health outcomes: proximity, retention, useability and visitation of neighbourhood green space.

Conservation covenants (or easements) are flexible but legally enforceable documents attached to a land title restricting the use of that land, providing for the protection of important conservation values, while allowing the landholder to retain possession. Given the attractiveness of covenants to those who seek to expand national and regional nature conservation initiatives, it is important to understand landholder motivations for participation in programmes that covenant for nature conservation. This paper examines the likely influences on landholder decision making when it comes to conservation initiatives. A review of literature highlights key motivations and determinants, such as landholder demographics and the nature of the land tenure in question, their knowledge and awareness of the programme, financial circumstances, and perceptions of financial and other risks and benefits of the programme itself, including incentives and compensation. Underpinning, or mediating, the decision-making processes will be landholder philosophies and values, and five constructs are determined from the review, namely economic dependence on property, private property rights, confidence in perpetual covenant mechanisms, nature conservation equity and nature conservation ethic. Using these constructs, a series of explicit hypotheses is drawn, applicable to agencies dealing with conservation covenants and testable through an adaptive management approach. A conceptual model is presented to show hypothesized relationships between motivational factors and the five constructs that will lead to the uptake of covenants by landholders, providing direction for policy makers and managers of incentive programmes for nature conservation on private lands.

High-rise apartment buildings have long been associated with the poor mental health of their residents. The aims of this paper are to examine whether this connection is necessarily so, by reviewing the evidence relating to the relationships between high-rise living and social wellbeing, occupant’s stress levels, and the influence they have on mental health. From selected literature, psychological stress and poor mental health outcomes of the populations that live in high-rise apartments are indeed apparent, and this is particularly so for apartments in poor neighbourhoods. Yet many apartments in developed cities are in affluent areas (particularly those with views of green/blue space), where residences on higher floors are more expensive. Either way, high-rise living and mental health outcomes are a social justice issue. Our review allows us to propose two models relating to high-rise living relevant today, based on these differences.

Oceania can be characterized by a richness of culture, biodiversity and natural resources and a particular future that the changing climate will bring to islands, livelihoods and ecosystems. We reviewed literature detailing the limitations of siloed approaches to public health and conservation action for regional sustainability, highlighting opportunities for regional integration as place-based, through activities that are locally relevant, innovative engagement across a broader variety of sectors and working with indigenous peoples' knowledges. We present three case studies that extend and redefine the boundaries of the fields of public health and conservation, enabling collaborators to better respond to complex issues impacting biodiversity and human health. These case studies make explicit the links between nutrition, catchment management, water resources, fisheries, marine protected areas and communicable and non-communicable diseases. Public health and conservation are more meaningfully connected in place-based, reciprocal and compassionate activities, using common language to draw on the well-developed instruments of both sectors. These will include health impact assessments and combine health and ecological economics, which together will contribute to responding to an emergent set of challenges, namely human population increase, urbanization, overfishing and more severe aspects of climate change.