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The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored that systems medicine depends on health systems and services that can respond to planetary health threats in scale and with speed. After 2 years of the pandemic, there are lessons learned in South Korea, from governance to risk communication for planetary health. The learning is timely because COVID-19 likely signals future ecological crises and emerging pathogens amid the climate emergency in the 21st century. By the end of March 2022, South Korea, with a population of 51.6 million, administered more COVID-19 vaccine doses per 100 people than other developed countries, including United Kingdom, Italy, Australia, Israel, Germany, and United States. In South Korea, 233.47 doses of COVID-19 vaccine were administered per 100 people, while Italy (229.48), China (229.39), Australia (217.44), the United Kingdom (211.39), Israel (194.82), and the United States (170.59) fell behind in vaccine rollout. Korea's whole-of-government approach to robust COVID-19 vaccination rollout prompted broad interest in planetary health. Notwithstanding that vaccine rollout is a complex multifactorial outcome, six salient, and often interdependent, factors are identified in this study of South Korea: (1) governance system; (2) logistic capability; (3) delivery strategy and accessibility; (4) established public health infrastructure; (5) risk communication; and (6) public cooperation and engagement. Integration of these factors can create multisectoral synergy to achieve better outcomes in vaccine rollout. The lessons from South Korea can help cultivate planetary health action in other parts of the world during the current COVID-19 pandemic, and in ecological crises in the future.

The National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases-supported Kidney Research National Dialogue asked the scientific community to formulate and prioritize research objectives that would improve our understanding of kidney function and disease; >1600 participants from >30 countries posted >300 ideas and >500 comments covering all areas of kidney research. Smaller groups of investigators interrogated the postings and published a series of commentaries in CJASN. Additional review of the entire series identified six cross-cutting themes: (1) increase training and team science opportunities to maintain/expand the nephrology workforce, (2) develop novel technologies to assess kidney function, (3) promote human discovery research to better understand normal and diseased kidney function, (4) establish integrative models of kidney function to inform diagnostic and treatment strategies, (5) promote interventional studies that incorporate more responsive outcomes and improved trial designs, and (6) foster translation from clinical investigation to community implementation. Together, these cross-cutting themes provide a research plan to better understand normal kidney biology and improve the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of kidney disease, and as such, they will inform future research efforts supported by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases through workshops and initiatives., (Copyright © 2014 by the American Society of Nephrology.)