Yale Center on Climate Change and Health; 3-Part Seminar: Care Without Carbon: Part 3: Lessons from the Nordic Sustainable Health Care Experience

Health systems around the world are turning their attention to greenhouse gas mitigation and resilience. Globally, health care is responsible for nearly 5% of total global greenhouse gas emissions. Nationally, US health care is responsible for 8.5% of US greenhouse gas emissions and similar fractions of toxic air emissions. Disease burden stemming from US health care pollution is on the same order of magnitude as medical errors, but is presently unaddressed.

As mandatory carbon reduction looms on the horizon for all sectors, this three-part symposium provides an overview of the current state of health care sustainability accounting, and seeks global lessons that can be adopted by the US health care delivery sector to guide mitigation and resilience strategies. Broadly, attendees can expect to be able to:

• Explain current needs for health care organization sustainability accounting
• Review different global framework tools for environmental and social performance accounting
• Describe international health care system sustainability exemplars and their applicability to the US system
• Discuss how health care organization sustainability accounting supports the development of data-driven interventions, mitigation targets and timelines

Part 3:

This session will review the Nordic path toward sustainable health care delivery, including origins and drivers, innovation, and tracking progress. Content will be drawn from Nordic hospitals, government agencies, and industry.

The Nordic region has a long tradition of sustainability leadership in the health care sector. The content draws from the Nordic White Paper on Sustainable Health care, a regional roadmap for achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Topics covered include: (i) Sustainability holistically embedded in hospital operations, which includes architecture, supply chains resource use, waste management, and governance; (ii) Innovative health care solutions developed by local companies, such as digital health solutions, sustainable medical technologies, lower-emission health care programs, and circular economy; (iii) Linkages between hospital and urban infrastructure through services such as district heating, district cooling, public transportation; and (iv) Culture, politics and legislations that have driven the regional sustainability agenda; and (v) Sustainability reporting frameworks and performance review.

• Health care sustainability
• Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)/Environmental Social and corporate Governance (ESG) reporting frameworks
• Health care environmental metrics that matter
• Development of science based targets and timelines
• Greenhouse gas emissions
• Climate risk disclosure
• Social and workforce sustainability
• Payment models

Health care executives, administrators and academics, health care facility operations managers and architects, supply chain administrators and managers, energy managers, transportation managers, sustainability professionals, physicians and allied health professionals, government officials, advocates, medical device and drug manufacturers, contractors, purchasers, distributors and vendors, reporting standards developers, payers and students.