The climate crisis is not just an environmental issue—it's a health issue. With the healthcare sector responsible for 8.5 percent of the United States' greenhouse gas emissions, the industry finds itself in a paradoxical position: while working to heal and protect human health, it simultaneously contributes to a global threat that undermines these same efforts.

The Hopkins Business of Health Initiative convened an expert panel at the Hopkins Bloomberg Center in Washington, D.C. to discuss how the healthcare industry at large and providers at the grassroots level are working to bring about change. From local initiatives to global influences, from realizations born of the pandemic to leveraging the power of federal health payers, the conversation offers several hopeful avenues for progress.

The panelists included Deanna Benner, MSN, APRN Women’s Health Nurse Practitioner at ChristianaCare and Co-founder and the Co-Chair of ChristianaCare’s Environmental Sustainability Caregiver Committee; Jeremy Greene, MD, William H. Welch Professor of Medicine and History of Medicine Director, Institute of the History of Medicine Director, Center for Medical Humanities & Social Medicine Johns Hopkins University, School of Medicine; and Jodi Sherman, MD, Associate Professor of Anesthesiology, Associate Professor of Epidemiology in Environmental Health Sciences, Founding Director of the Yale Program on Healthcare Environmental Sustainability in the Yale Center on Climate Change and Health Medical Director for Yale New Haven Health Center for Sustainable Healthcare Yale University, School of Medicine.

Below, are 8 key takeaways from the panel, offering insights into how the healthcare sector can become a champion for both human and environmental health. One of the themes throughout the discussion was the challenge of re-creating the healthcare supply chain, with its reliance on single-use, disposable paper and plastic goods.

  1. Local is global. No matter how isolated they may first appear, local emergencies caused by climate change create a domino effect that impacts supplies and staffing far beyond the immediate area. “It really requires us to think beyond our localities about how we really are all connected in this regard,” said Sherman. "This issue is not going away–it's only getting bigger. We have to be educated, we have to figure out solutions, we need to recreate our system, and we need to do it now."
     
  2. The pandemic changed everything. The U.S. healthcare system had never experienced the kind of supply chain breakdowns that caused massive disruption in hospitals’ ability to care for patients. “There's a lot of awareness that’s come out of the pandemic that I think everyone in the world can relate to, and that is: resources are limited. We had very little awareness being in a rich nation until we were challenged in this way,” said Sherman.
     
  3. Climate impacts are unevenly distributed. Maintaining the status quo seems less painful than massive change for those who are not yet directly impacted by the health effects of the changing climate. “We don't all suffer equally,” said Greene. “Who actually pays the price from an environmental justice perspective on health care?”
     
  4. Progress abroad will speed up change at home. The NHS England is the largest national health system in the world and they're now using their procurement power to require any company that they do business with to measure their emissions and have a plan in place to measure progress in bringing down those emissions. Across Europe, other health systems are doing the same. “If there are new standards in Europe, then it's certainly going to help influence what's happening in the United States,” Sherman said. “Even though right now what we're doing is voluntary, that demand side is creating criteria that the market is going to have to respond to and that we can benefit from without needing the mandates.”
     
  5. Raising awareness, not regulations, can be the first step. In addition to the market forces that are gradually requiring more sustainable business operations, Benner emphasized the importance of engaging caregivers on an individual level to inspire a grassroots demand for climate-friendly operations. “I think all the little things do matter, because if you have 14,000 employees and everybody's doing their part, I think you can have huge change,” said Benner. “The volume on the climate conversation needs to become so loud that hospital leadership knows that the people that are delivering the care, care about how they're delivering it.”
     
  6. Federal health payers have unmatched leverage. Once Centers for Medicare and Medicaid start tying payment to sustainability, the momentum for new approaches will grow quickly. “These payers’ ability to actually achieve forms of change that are thought impossible in the healthcare system in general occupies a really important aspect of healthcare policy,” said Greene.
     
  7. Suppliers will respond to the changing demands of the market. The triangular relationship between industry, regulatory framework, and hospitals and health systems is not static; it’s much more malleable than it might appear. “Once we place sustainability as a virtue in the engineering of medical devices, which it simply hasn't been since the 1960s, we will find new solutions that are both financially successful and ecologically sustainable,” said Greene.
     
  8. Healthcare culture needs to shift as much as supply chains do. As today’s physicians and nurses were trained in the current era of disposable medical supplies, relearning protocols using less wasteful techniques will require their buy-in and support. “It reminds me of the tobacco story. At one time, clinicians would smoke at the bedside, and healthcare organizations would hold investments in tobacco. None of that is acceptable now, and the same thing has to become true in terms of environmental sustainability,” said Greene.

Watch a recording of the full discussion on C-Span here.