March 7th, 2024

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COALITION SPOTLIGHT

Start Your Health Care Forest

Spring is just around the corner, making this the perfect time to start your health care forest!

Health care facilities can play a leadership role in creating carbon sinks and bringing back biodiversity while regenerating their grounds, simply by re-wilding their facilities. This includes planting trees, shrubs, pollinator plants, natural grasses, creating rain gardens, healing gardens and more.

In 2023 the Coalition co-launched the national Trees for Health project with a large tree planting in Edmonton. Join the Coalition and our many collaborative partners in leading the health care section in re-wilding our health care facility spaces, becoming a sustainable model for the communities in which we reside.

Please email [email protected] to learn more and help us create a National Health Care Forest!

UPCOMING OPPORTUNITIES

Opportunity: Research Scans

Nourish is excited to offer two research scan contracts (March - June 2024) focused on critical areas within our field - Indigenous foodways and food prescribing. 

If you have a passion for advancing health equity by integrating Indigenous foodways into health care, or if you are intrigued by the transformative potential of food as medicine through food prescribing, we want to hear from you! Both research scans will shed light on the challenges and opportunities present in these areas, supporting Nourish to continue to advance meaningful progress around food for health.

Expressions of Interest for both research contracts can be submitted by March 8, 2024. Please find more details on the Noursih website regarding the scope of research, application process, and timeline.

Waste Auditor Training

Dates: April 16th-19th, 2024

Waste audits are a valuable tool for organisations to assess what’s being wasted and uncover revenue streams. They also evaluate the effectiveness of waste reduction programs, measure success, and improve operations.

The training is based on a Standard Waste Audit Method, that supports development in key areas: 

• Accurate and standardized methods of measuring and reporting performance
• Auditing principles
• Sampling methods
• Benchmarking and data analysis
• Best practices
• Compliance with regulation

Registration deadline is Thursday March 21st, 2024

Global Health Care Carbon Challenge

The International Federation of Healthcare Engineering (IFHE) “cutting the carbs”! Join your fellow health care facilities around the world in reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. That’s right — the IFHE, with support from Mazzetti, is hosting a global health care carbon challenge. The goal is to reduce GHG emissions across health care facilities, globally. Awards for “best in country” and “best in world” reductions will be awarded on stage at the IFHE’s Annual Congress in Capetown, South Africa in 2024.

CLIMATE ACTION

Green Surgery Report

UK Health Alliance on Climate Change

The Green Surgery Report is a landmark report that presents the first detailed account of how to reduce the environmental impact of surgical care while maintaining high quality patient care and potentially saving the NHS money.

The report provides initiatives and recommendations to reduce the adverse impact of surgical care on the environment, based upon evidence synthesis and case studies.

Understanding nurses' experience of climate change in Western Canada

Journal of Advanced Nursing

The aim of this article is to understand nurses' personal and professional experience with heat dome, drought and forest fires of 2021 and how those events impacted perspectives on climate action.

Their research yielded three themes to describe nurses' perspective on climate change: health impacts; climate action and system influences.

Investment emissions: Harnessing the power of health sector influence

Health Care Without Harm

The health care sector is on the front line of the climate crisis, with an ethical obligation to do no harm and a pressing opportunity to take climate action to protect health and health care delivery.

Momentum is increasing across the sector to integrate the health benefits of rapidly phasing out fossil fuels through a just transition to a clean energy economy. The health care sector accounts for 8.5% of total U.S. greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and financial investments can comprise as much as half of a U.S. health system’s total emissions.

All industries, including health care, must halve their emissions by 2030 on their way to achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.

Assessing the human health benefits of climate mitigation, pollution prevention, and biodiversity preservation

National Library of Medicine

Actions taken by national governments and international agencies to mitigate climate change, pollution, and biodiversity loss can improve health, prevent disease, save lives, and enhance human well-being. Yet assessment of health benefits is largely absent from evaluations of environmental remediation programs. This represents a lost opportunity to quantify the full benefits of environmental remediation and to educate policy makers and the public.

Authors recommend that national governments and international agencies implementing interventions against climate change, pollution, and biodiversity loss develop metrics and strategies for quantifying the health benefits of these interventions.

Navigating biomedical waste management policies for sustainability playbook

CASCADES

The Navigating biomedical waste management policies for sustainability playbook focuses on strategies to work effectively with biomedical waste management policies in order to reduce the environmental impact of both the waste itself and the processes required to manage it.

It is intended for health care policymakers looking for opportunities to improve the environmental sustainability of biomedical waste management and individual changemakers wishing to work in compliance with their local, provincial, or national regulations in organized care settings such as hospitals, primary care clinics or long-term care centres.

CIRCULAR ECONOMY

Move to reusable isolation gowns helps UHN 'hit our sustainability sweet spot'

Talkin' trash with Unity Health Network

UHN continues to uphold its reputation as a world-leading green hospital – this time with an impressive reduction in waste from personal protective equipment (PPE) by almost fully transitioning from disposable isolation gowns to reusable ones.

While UHN has been using reusable isolation gowns for many years, the COVID-19 pandemic put extreme pressure on the supply of disposable PPE, which led many more clinics and units to switch to reusable gowns.



Today, 99 per cent of isolation gowns at UHN are reusable.

How the plastic industry lied about recycling for decades

Corporate Knights

For 40 years, plastic and petrochemical companies have tried to convince the public that plastics can be recycled. But they’ve known for just as long that plastics recycling would never work.

A report released by the nonprofit Center for Climate Integrity, chronicles a “decades-long campaign of fraud and deception” from Big Oil and the plastics industry to promote recycling as a solution to the plastic pollution crisis.

New documents show that industry executives pushed plastics recycling despite knowing since the 1980s that it “cannot be considered a permanent solid waste solution,” and that recycled plastics would never be able to compete economically with virgin material.

CLEAN ENERGY

Working Towards Net Zero GHG Emissions for New Hospitals

Greening Health Care

This white paper is the sixth annual report arising from the ongoing Greening Health Care research into the operational energy performance of recently built hospitals.

This paper describes lessons learned from actual energy performance of 30 recently built hospitals from 6 regions of North America, with specific, evidence-based recommendations on modeling and targets, performance-based commissioning and operations.

CLEAN TRANSPORTATION

Low-Carbon Transportation Policies Can Reduce Health Care Emissions and Benefit Local Communities

Georgetown Climate Center

The Georgetown Climate Center recently released a new report, “Decarbonizing Health Care: Low-Carbon Transportation Policies Can Reduce Health Care Emissions and Benefit Local Communities,'' the second in their series on health care delivery organisations' role in climate action.

The paper delves into the crucial issue of transportation emissions in the health care sector and recommends that health care delivery organisations embrace policy solutions and take advantage of available programs to cut emissions and advance climate equity goals.

Release of RETScreen^® Version 9.1

EVENTS, TRAINING AND WEBINARS

Picking the low hanging fruit

Lighting retrofits, scheduling HVAC plant and equipment, and improved controls – these three items account for the majority of the energy and emissions reduction potential in hospitals.

On April 10th, join Greening Health Care and hear from their technical team presenting step by step guides from identifying measures and quantifying savings through to implementing improvements and verifying results.

Get your questions answered and leave with a clear understanding of what to do and how to get it done.

2024 Canadian Conference on Physician Leadership

It is with great excitement that we welcome you to the 2024 Canadian Conference on Physician Leadership, taking place May 24th-25th in Montreal.

In the upcoming 2024 conference, themed Shifting the Paradigm, the primary objective is to shift the conversation. The aim is to move beyond merely addressing the symptoms of a health care system in crisis to focusing on how to drive fundamental system reform that will have a lasting impact and work for everyone.

We invite you to join fellow physician leaders who are equally passionate about shifting the conversation and the health care paradigm.

EV & Charging Expo 2024

Transitioning to zero-emissions vehicles may be one of the biggest challenges that organizations will face in the coming years. Electric Autonomy’s EV & Charging Expo is the place to learn about and experience everything EV-related from installing charging infrastructure to fleet electrification, all under one roof.

Register for the event to meet and network with experts, vendors and industry peers.

Dates: May 1st-2nd, 2024

Location: Toronto, ON

Use promo code: CCGHC30 to receive a 30% discount off the Expo Pass. This discount is valid until March 31, 2024.

CHES 2024 Webinar Series

Dates and Topics:

• March 20, 2024 - Using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to Harness Free Energy to Optimize Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) Efficiency
• April 17, 2024 - Beyond Directions: Designing Effective Wayfinding Systems for User Experience
• May 15, 2024 - Climate Change and Mould in Your Healthcare Facility
• June 26, 2024 - Retrofit for Sustainability
• October 2, 2024 - Major changes in the 2022 edition of the Infection Control during Construction, Renovation and Maintenance in Health Care Facilities Standard
• October 30, 2024 - Applying the Z317.13:22 Standard to Renovation Projects
• November 27, 2024 - Applying Infection Prevention and Control Practices for Hospital Maintenance Workers

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. Learn more and register to donate HERE.

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