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Remembering Dr. Lynne Marshal | |
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The Coalition is saddened to announce the passing of our long-time friend, supporter and mentor, Dr. Lynn Margaret Marshall, on April 14th, 2022 at the age of 79.
Lynn was one of the first physicians to engage with the fledgling Canadian Coalition for Green Health Care as a medical advisor, back when few others had recognized the importance of a sustainable health system and a healthy planet for all.
In addition to Lynn’s 55-year career in family medicine, environmental health, occupational medicine, psychotherapy/hypnotherapy and epidemiological research, she always found time to support Coalition initiatives, lend a hand to usher in new converts to the world of environmental stewardship, and coach us on how to better achieve our common goals.
Our thoughts are with Lynn’s husband Larry, her sons Thomas and Bryan, and all those whose lives have been touched by Lynn.
Donations to Canadian Partnership for Children’s Health and Environment in memory of Dr. Lynn Marshall can be made via CPCHE partner organization, the Canadian Child Care Federation (CCCF), via electronic payment at the following link: https://cccf-fcsge.ca/campaigns/in-memory-of-lynn-marshall/donate/ or by cheque payable to the Canadian Child Care Federation, with a memo “CPCHE donation in memory of Lynn Marshall” mailed to CCCF, 700 Industrial Avenue, Suite 600, Ottawa, ON K1G 0Y9. CCCF will hold all donations in trust and the funds will be used exclusively to support CPCHE programs.
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2021 Green Health Care Awards
The 2021 Green Health Care Awards were announced Wednesday September 21st and Thursday September 22nd, 2022 respectively, at virtual award presentations held by the Canadian Coalition for Green Health Care. The awards, made possible with support from Ontario’s Save on Energy initiative, honour Canada’s most sustainable health care organisations.
This year’s awards honoured the top performing Canadian hospitals in Energy and Energy Behaviour as well as Water, Waste, Leadership and Pollution Prevention categories. The hospitals with the best overall scores in their respective peer groups receive the Green Hospital of the Year Award.
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Green Hospital of the Year
Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre – Community (Winnipeg MB)
Hamilton Health Sciences – Ron Joyce Children’s Health Centre – Academic (Hamilton ON)
Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital – Non-Acute (Toronto ON)
Four Counties Health Services – Small (Newbury ON)
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Water
Markham Stouffville Hospital – Community (Markham ON)
The Ottawa Hospital – General Hospital – Academic (Ottawa ON)
Provincial Health Services Authority – Sunny Hill Health Centre – Non-Acute (Vancouver BC)
Four Counties Health Services – Small (Newbury ON)
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Leadership
Peterborough Regional Health Centre - Community (Peterborough ON)
University Health Network – Academic (Toronto ON)
Sinai Health – Mount Sinai Hospital – Academic (Toronto ON)
Health Sciences Centre Winnipeg – Academic (Winnipeg MB)
Unity Health Toronto – Academic (Toronto ON)
Trillium Health Partners – Academic (Toronto ON)
Hospital for Sick Children – Academic (Toronto ON)
Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre – Academic (Toronto ON)
London Health Sciences Centre – University Hospital – Academic (London ON)
Rockyview General Hospital – Academic (Calgary AB)
Sinai Health – Hennick Bridgepoint Hospital – Non-Acute (Toronto ON)
West Park Healthcare Centre – Non-Acute (Toronto ON)
Kemptville District Hospital - Small (Kemptville ON)
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Northumberland Hills Hospital (Cobourg ON) – Community
Unity Health Toronto – Providence Healthcare (Toronto ON) – Academic
St. Joseph’s Health Care – Parkwood Institute Mental Health Care Building (London ON) – Non-Acute
Four Counties Health Services (Newbury ON) – Small
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Pollution Prevention
Northumberland Hills Hospital (Cobourg ON) – Community
Markham Stouffville Hospital (Markham ON) – Community
Unity Health Toronto - St. Michael’s Hospital (Toronto ON) – Academic
Hospital for Sick Children (Toronto ON) – Academic
Unity Health Toronto - St. Joseph’s Health Centre (Toronto ON) – Academic
Unity Health Toronto - Providence Healthcare (Toronto ON) – Academic
West Park Healthcare Centre (Toronto ON) – Non-Acute
Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital (Toronto ON) – Non-Acute
Kemptville District Hospital (Kemptville ON) - Small
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Waste
Ross Memorial Hospital – Community (Lindsay ON)
Trillium Health Partners – Queensway Health Centre – Academic (Toronto ON)
Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital – Non-Acute (Toronto ON)
Kemptville District Hospital - Small (Kemptville ON)
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Energy Canada-Wide
Fraser Health Authority – Langley Memorial Hospital (Langley BC)– Community
Providence Health Care – St. Paul’s Hospital (Vancouver BC) – Academic
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Energy Behaviour
St. Joseph’s Health Care London (London ON)
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Call for collaborators: All about the CASCADES RFP | |
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Interested in working with CASCADES on a sustainable health care innovation?
CASCADES is seeking proposals from teams of health professionals, administrators, and/or leaders in the
Canadian health care system who wish to collaborate with CASCADES on service delivery or system design innovations that reduce the climate impact of health care or increase climate resilience in their settings.
Join them on October 6th to learn more about different types of innovation and the supports they can offer—and all about the process of submitting a proposal.
This event will be presented in English, but questions may be posed in either French or English, and copies of the slide deck will be made available in both languages.
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CCHL – National Awards Program
The Canadian College of Health Leaders is inviting nominations for the 2023 National Awards Program. This is a great opportunity to recognize and promote the outstanding leaders and programs in your organisation.
Award recipients will be recognized during the College’s 2023 Honouring Health Leadership event. The date and format of this celebration will be announced later this year.
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Renewable energy partnerships
Take part in a unique opportunity to create a greener future by joining the growing membership of a new Ontario based co-operative working to build renewable energy projects in our communities.
The Community Energy Development Co-operative’s member-owned solar installations generate prosperity while actively addressing climate change. Check out their website and see if this is an opportunity for your hospital to further embrace environmental stewardship.
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Walking, wheeling and cycling to be offered on prescription in nationwide trial
Gov.UK
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Social prescriptions, including walking, wheeling and cycling, will be offered by GPs as part of a new trial to improve mental and physical health and reduce disparities across the country, the government has announced today (22 August 2022).
The government has awarded £12.7 million in multi-year funding to 11 local authority areas in England. The funding will go towards several pilot projects in each location, including:
- adult cycle training
- free bike loans
- walking groups
Other schemes include all-ability cycling taster days where people who may not have cycled before can try to in a friendly environment, or walking and cycling mental health groups where people can connect with their communities as they get active.
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Responsible innovation in health: Concepts an tools for sustainable impact | |
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This book invites innovators to forge a new health innovation development path that delivers inclusive and sustainable solutions to 21st century social, environmental, and economic challenges.
Readers are equipped with the concepts and tools of Responsible Innovation in Health (RIH) to develop and bring to market health innovations that also strengthen health system equity, provide more value to users, use fewer resources, are good for the environment, and are economically viable.
Rather than asking innovators to “be” responsible, this book enables them to “do” responsibility by applying nine measurable responsibility attributes throughout the innovation lifecycle. The RIH attributes are informed by our empirical research conducted with health innovators and validated through peer-reviewed publications.
Special offer: 20% off the printed book or the e-book - valid until October 17th, 2022
Coupon code: FSOA7y46W9YNBR
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Do no harm: Healthcare professionals address sustainability and climate change
Economist Impact
Climate change is creating a health emergency. In a survey of hospital doctors and nurses in France, Germany and the UK, many agreed they need to better prepare patients and adapt their health care systems to be more sustainable.
Health care professionals are actively treating an increasing number of patients affected by climate change factors. But health care facilities, activities and supply chains are a large contributor to climate change, unintentionally reinforcing the very problems they aim to solve. In total, health care represents 4-5% of total global carbon emissions.
Fortunately, the health care sector is starting to understand the significant role it can play in decarbonisation efforts to better protect patients and the planet from climate change. How then, can health care move forwards in the best interests of its patients and the planet?
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Health care and the climate crisis: Preparing America's health care infrastructure
Ways & Means Committee
The U.S. health care system is responsible for an estimated 10 percent of national greenhouse gas emissions, which cause extreme weather events and contribute to worse health outcomes. Providers, suppliers, and other actors in the health sector have a role to play in curbing emissions and ensuring they are appropriately prepared for increasing climate-related events that will inevitably disrupt operations.
Beginning in March 2022, Committee on Ways and Means Chair Richard E. Neal sent out a request for information (RFI) to hospitals, health systems, and other facility-based health providers to better understand how climate events have impacted the health sector, as well as steps the health care industry is taking to address its role in mitigating the climate crisis.
In total, the Committee received and analyzed responses from 63 providers across the country, respondents were classified as “climate innovators.”
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Health organisations call non-proliferation of fossil fuels
The Lancet
WHO and others have signed a letter urging governments to make a legally binding treaty to end the expansion of fossil fuel production and use. Sharmila Devi reports.
WHO is among almost 200 global health associations urging governments to agree a legally binding non-proliferation treaty on fossil fuels to protect human and planetary health.
While phasing out fossil fuel subsidies and coal power were mentioned in the agreement put together at last year's UN COP26 summit, the letter calls for stronger commitments from governments to end expansion of any new fossil fuel infrastructure and production, and to equitably phase out current use.
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The climate-driven health crisis
Axios
The world is facing a climate change-fuelled health crisis — from increased emergency department visits due to heatstroke, exacerbated asthma and even heart attacks to injuries and illness linked to severe storms.
Why it matters: The growing threats to human health only promise to get more complex and expensive, and health systems have to make major changes to how they prepare for those threats.
There's a growing recognition among U.S. health systems that the threats from climate change will have a major impact on their operations.
"A lot of health care systems have started to grapple with the direct physical risks to their own facilities," said a leader in work on climate risk in the real estate and infrastructure sectors.
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Food as medicine: Could prescribing fruit and vegetables become part of health care?
The Guardian
What if healthy eating could be prescribed in the same way as medication, as a prescriptive intervention, subsidised by government, readily available and with plenty of support and information, to help prevent or treat disease? The idea of “food as medicine” is gaining traction around the world as scientists and doctors look for ways to use food in a targeted fashion to improve health.
Decades of campaigns on healthy eating have failed to make much of a dent in worsening rates of obesity and type 2 diabetes. Many say the problem is systemic barriers – such as cost, availability, accessibility and education – that no amount of public health messaging advocating for healthy diets can overcome.
Advocates believe better targeted, supported and funded prescriptive approaches are needed and that’s where the idea of food as medicine comes in.
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Health diets from sustainable food systems: Food planet health
EAT - Lancet Commission
Food is the single strongest lever to optimize human health and environmental sustainability on Earth.
However, food is currently threatening both people and planet. An immense challenge facing humanity is to provide a growing world population with healthy diets from sustainable food systems.
While global food production of calories has generally kept pace with population growth, more than 820 million people still lack sufficient food, and many more consume either low-quality diets or too much food. Unhealthy diets now pose a greater risk to morbidity and mortality than unsafe sex, alcohol, drug and tobacco use combined.
Global food production threatens climate stability and ecosystem resilience and constitutes the single largest driver of environmental degradation and transgression of planetary boundaries. A radical transformation of the global food system is urgently needed.
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Every year the U.S. throws away 160 billion pounds of food. These students set to do something about it.
Environmental Defense Fund
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Each year in the United States, 160 billion pounds of food goes uneaten – that’s about 35% of our food supply. If all of that food was grown in one place, the farm would cover three-quarters of California. This waste happens all along the food system supply chain, from farm to fridge and is responsible for 4% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.
That’s what prompted a team at Environmental Defense Fund to team up with ReFED, a national nonprofit working to stop food waste in the U.S. Together the two groups created the Food Waste Fellowship, a program of summer fellowships which connects graduate-level graduates with leading food companies to help them reduce and rethink food waste.
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Why Indigenous-led projects could be key to combating Canada's energy dilemma
Global News
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Canada’s energy dilemma can be dealt with in-part through Indigenous-led clean energy projects, according to some First Nations leaders in B.C. who say they’re too often left out of the conversation.
The path forward, they say, would involve their communities having an equity stake in major projects, while placing this country on the map as a leading exporter of some of the natural resources the world relies on.
With centuries-old ancestral knowledge of protecting lands and natural resources, Indigenous people in Canada can play a major role in helping the world reduce its reliance on fossil fuels.
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Canada outlines progress on its green government fleet strategy on the world stage
Electric Autonomy
This week the Canadian government told a gathering of 60 countries how it is taking meaningful steps to reduce the carbon footprint of its fleet of vehicles as it works to transition the federal fleet to zero-emission.
The fifth meeting of the Greening Government Initiative — a forum cohosted by the White House Council on Environment Quality (CEQ) and the Government of Canada’s Centre for Greening Government — was the latest in a series of meetings held in the past year in which countries trade information, advice and progress updates on their efforts to “green national government operations and build climate resilience in the public sector.”
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GM, Lithion ink EV battery recycling deal in Quebec
Electric Autonomy
General Motors is one step closer to building an integrated North American electric vehicle battery supply chain after a partnership deal with Quebec-based battery recycling company, Lithion Recycling Inc.
Through the automaker’s investment arm, GM Ventures, GM will invest an as-yet undisclosed amount in Lithion to gain access to their recycling technology.
Initially, Lithion and GM will focus on validating the use of Lithion’s recovered battery materials in the making of new batteries, as well as exploring the potential to acquire battery materials in North America.
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EVENTS, TRAINING AND WEBINARS | |
Green Health Care webinar: Working towards world-class energy efficiency in hospitals | |
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Greening Health Care is pleased to announce the (virtual) launch of their latest annual report on the actual operating energy performance of Ontario’s growing fleet of new P3 hospitals together with lessons learned to inform energy targets, models, design and operations of all hospitals under development.
The webinar will present the preliminary results of our research into building system level design metrics and an update on international benchmarking which is documenting the most energy efficient hospitals in the world.
Dates: October 12th, 2022
Time: 12:30pm EDT
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Food series: Food as medicine
Approximately 50% of total food placed at patient’s bedside ends up as waste, resulting in millions of dollars in wasted food, worsening the climate change crisis we face.
Dr. Eileen Wong will be sharing her findings in her award winning Quality Improvement project on the food experience of residents in a long-term care. With a patient-focused lens, she will explore measurement as means to evaluate change as well as consider food sustainability and resource stewardship.
Date: October 26th, 2022
Time: 12:00pm-1:00pm PDT
*Want to learn more about climate change and sustainability in BC health care? Visit bcgreencare.ca for more information and stay up to date by subscribing to the GreenCare newsletter.
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Building adaptation skills for a changing climate
The Building Regional Adaptation Capacity and Expertise (BRACE) Program led by Natural Resources Canada (NRCan), is launching a fall webinars series focused on sharing experiences on how to build climate change adaptation skills. The webinars series will feature the results of over 20 co-funded projects.
Next webinar - Building adaptation skills for planners
This webinar will feature the following presentations:
- Planners Training and the Adaptation Resource Pathway
- Planning a Climate Resilient Manitoba
- Building Infrastructure Resilience and Adapting to Climate Change in Newfoundland and Labrador
Date: October 3rd, 2022
Time: 1:00pm-2:00pm PDT
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RETScreen® is a Clean Energy Management Software system for energy efficiency, renewable energy and cogeneration project feasibility analysis as well as ongoing energy performance analysis.
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Have you registered as an organ donor?
Contact your local organ donation agency and speak to your family about your wishes. You have the power to save and transform lives.
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The Canadian Coalition for Green Health Care is Canada’s premier green health care resource network, leading the evolution of green in Canada’s health sector as a national voice and catalyst for environmental change. www.greenhealthcare.ca | |
Some articles referred to in the Digest make reference to services and/or product offerings from specific suppliers. The CCGHC recommends that readers research the service and product offerings available through a wider range of suppliers for comparison purposes and in keeping with public sector purchasing guidelines. These articles should not be interpreted as an endorsement of any product or service. | | | | | |
