The start of a new year is a time for standing back and seeing a broader perspective, and for those of us working in health, this includes thinking about how we can improve the health of our patients and the general public, and at the same time make healthcare more sustainable.
The Centre for Sustainable Healthcare is delighted to announce the start of a new project with the Canal & River Trust, the charity which cares for 2,000 miles of waterway in England and Wales.
CSH and the Ecosystems Knowledge Network are holding a workshop on the 25th November in partnership with South Pennines LNP. The workshop aims to bring about effective working relationships between local organisations in the health sector and those who can deliver improved access to the natural outdoors in Bradford and Airedale Districts to tackle childhood obesity.
We certainly had a fantastic day at the NHS Forest Conference, it was great to see so many health and green space professionals in one place having some lively discussions and developing partnerships. We are hugely grateful to University Hospital Birmingham for hosting the event and providing us with an inspiring tour of their site and all the work they have done there. Lots of ideas have been generated!
In 2013 the Government announced the 8 cities to be awarded a share of the £77m Cycle City Ambition Grant. The policy goals of promoting city cycling in this way are to promote local economic growth, reduce carbon emissions and improve health. It’s exciting to learn that the Department for Transport (DfT), in its assessment of project value, is taking the health and environmental benefits very seriously.
“NHS: efficiency savings through waste reduction” was the subject of a joint meeting of the All-Party Parliamentary Health Group and the All-Party Parliamentary Sustainable Resource Group earlier this month. The All-Party Parliamentary Groups provide a forum to inform debate among members of Parliament on key policy issues, and the event was chaired by Neil Carmichael MP, with contributions from Dr Terry Tudor, Senior Lecturer in Waste Management at the University of Northampton, Alexandra Hammond, Head of Sustainability at Guy’s and St. Thomas NHS Foundation Trust, and Dr Frances Mortimer from CSH.
A guide for doctors on cutting waste in clinical care, which was co-authored by the Royal College of Psychiatrists' Fellow in Sustainability, Dr Daniel Maughan, was the BBC's top story on 6th November. Commissioned by the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, the guide provides a framework for doctors to think critically about waste from a clinical perspective and provides examples of doctors improving the value of healthcare by reducing waste. Chair of the Academy, Professor Terrence Stephenson, spoke about the report on Radio Four's Today Programme (at 1 hr 9 minutes) highlighting examples in the report such as minimising the use of x-rays where there is no proven benefit from their use.
In late 2011 while making coffee in our staff kitchen I happened to ask my Director, Sally Hancox, “Do you think we’ve stopped folk turning up as much at their Doctors now they have had the home retrofitted with energy efficient measures?” We have gathered a tremendous amount of anecdotal evidence from our retrofit programme to suggest people with conditions made worse by the cold were now managing their conditions better. However, as presented, it was worthless to the NHS… Sally’s response “No idea, go and find out”.
CareLand is a pioneer group of Portuguese-Spanish, working on promotion and research of the effects of what nature’s conservation has on health and wellness.
This article by CSH's Sustainable Surgery Fellow, Chantelle Rizan, and co-authors, provides greenhouse gas emission factors for the different healthcare waste streams in the UK.
Article: Environmental impact of Personal Protective Equipment supplied to health and social care services in England in the first six months of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Background: Health-care services are necessary for sustaining and improving human wellbeing, yet they have an environmental footprint that contributes to environment-related threats to human health.
The cataract surgery audit tool ‘Eyefficiency’ was designed to identify opportunities for sites to minimize the footprint of cataract surgical services and to increase access to cataract surgery for patients worldwide.
This toolkit gives you everything you need for a 1 minute, 5 minute and even more minute conversation, complete with step-by-step guides, behavioural change insights and all the evidence to back it up.
The study analyses the impact of service provision at different locations on health outcomes, cost of service, carbon emissions and patients and their families.
The University of Westminster has published an excellent explanatory document on social prescription. It's a fantastic end to end resource with explanations of terminology, structures, different types of social prescription, and referral examples.
I hope this might be interesting to some members, this article reports on work we have been doing to look at overuse in health care as a form of overconsumption, and examines health care overuse from the perspectives of ecological economics and sustainable consumption (amongst other economic pers
Sustainability has been recognised as a domain of quality in healthcare, and building it into quality improvement (QI) is a practical way to drive incremental change towards a more ethical, sustainable health system.