Liz Willetts

Liz Willetts, PA-C, MEM, MMSc is a family medicine clinician and science-policy expert on planetary health governance. She has 20 years’ experience tracking international diplomacy and environment and human rights law related to the nature and health nexus.

Since 2009, Liz has covered over a dozen multilateral environmental agreements and processes with the ENB. She is experienced in the global governance of climate change, biodiversity, chemicals and waste pollution, land, food security, water, disaster risk reduction, Indigenous Peoples issues, and sustainable development. She closely follows the evolving environmental agenda of the World Health Organization and the World Health Assembly.

She has advised and authored landmark planetary health works for organizations including the World Health Organization, World Bank, UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, the Global Alliance for the Future of Food, the Planetary Health Alliance, the Indigenous Determinants of Health Alliance, and International Alliance Against Health Risks in Wildlife Trade among others. She is a contributing author to IPCC AR7 and was a voluntary reviewer for several IPBES thematic assessments.

From 2023-2024 Liz served as Planetary Health Policy Director at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She also advised and drafted the UN Convention on Biological Diversity Global Action Plan on Biodiversity and Health negotiated and adopted by 196 countries in 2024. She is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations (U.S.) and contributes freelance news writing for The Lancet and The Lancet Planetary Health. She is affiliated to the Masters in Planetary Health at University of Edinburgh, Scotland and at Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Spain, and is an Associate Editor for Frontiers Conservation Social Science and Indigenous and Local Knowledges.

She has a B.A. in biology (University of Pennsylvania), M.E.M. in environmental economics and policy (Duke University Nicholas School of the Environment), and M.M.S.c. in medicine (Emory University School of Medicine).

As a clinician, Liz served long-term roles in resource poor primary care medical clinics, on a remote island in Micronesia, at a bilingual Spanish clinic in Harvard - Mass General-Brigham Hospital system, and in an Indigenous hospital in Central America. She currently practices in an underserved community clinic with a focus on women’s health.