Healthcare in a carbon-constrained world

Area of Science:

• Environmental Science
• Public Health
• Healthcare Management

Background:

• The health sector has a significant carbon footprint requiring urgent decarbonisation.
• Traditional environmental initiatives (e.g., recycling, energy efficiency) are insufficient for the scale of change needed.
• There is a growing need to explore innovative strategies for environmental sustainability in healthcare.

Purpose of the Study:

• To explore healthcare thought leaders' perspectives on creating an environmentally sustainable health system.
• To identify key themes and enablers for reducing the healthcare sector's carbon footprint.
• To investigate the potential for reshaping healthcare's role to achieve wider environmental and societal benefits.

Main Methods:

• Qualitative exploratory study design.
• Semistructured, in-depth interviews with 15 healthcare thought leaders from Australia, the UK, the US, and New Zealand.
• Thematic analysis and matrix display of transcribed interview data.

Main Results:

• Healthcare thought leaders favour fundamental redesign over traditional 'green' initiatives for decarbonisation.
• Five main themes emerged, with a key enabler identified as information communication technology.
• A significant theme focused on reshaping healthcare's societal role to leverage influence for health, environmental, and societal gains.
• Ideas include adopting anticipatory approaches using predictive analytics for environmental sustainability.

Conclusions:

• Potentially low-carbon models of care can be developed through fundamental system redesign.
• Piloting and measuring the health, environmental, and financial outcomes of these models is the crucial next step.
• Achieving an environmentally sustainable healthcare system necessitates transformational change and engagement with health practitioners.