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(Safer hand hygiene toolkit) Mayo Clinic set out to standardize hand soaps throughout the system and reduce costs. Infection prevention and control brought forward a critical goal to eliminate the use of antimicrobial hand hygiene products used in patient care and public areas. A multi-disciplinary team reviewed and piloted hand hygiene products and collected user feedback on those products. Mayo Clinic successfully implemented UL ECOLOGO green-certified hand soap and hand sanitizer without antimicrobial agents. The hand hygiene initiative was applied system-wide.
Type: Resources
By Kaeleigh Sheehan, Member Engagement and Greening the OR manager
“Globally, nationally, as a sector, we have to set higher standards, and be more mindful of our impact,” says Dr. Seema Gandhi, associate clinical professor of anesthesiology at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) Medical Center.
Gandhi says environmental stewardship has always played a prominent role in her daily life. Growing up in India, her parents reinforced mindfulness and only using what was needed. Naturally, she brought that mindset into her clinical practice, beginning with her medical training at… Read More
Type: Press
Our cars, our health
The American Lung Association’s 19th annual “state of the air” report found that 134 million Americans – more than 41% – lived in counties with unhealthy levels of either ozone or particulate pollution in 2014-2016. In a country with over 270 million vehicles, America’s air suffers from tailpipe pollution. Health impacts of air pollution include asthma and respiratory illness, heart disease and stroke, cancer, low birth weights due to reproductive toxicants, premature death, and traffic morbidity and mortality. In Massachusetts, where one in 11 people already suffer from… Read More
Type: Press
A subject site is a 455-bed hospital in the Midwest with a large laundry operation servicing three ancillary long-term care sites in addition to the main hospital and physician buildings. The main hospital building was built in 1965. SITUATION The Engineering staff was challenged to help the site (and IDN) meet overall budget reduction goals in energy use cost reduction driven by National Healthcare Legislation reimbursement reductions.
The Engineering staff also wanted to implement a set of solutions that drove long-term cost reductions that contributed to improving the overall operating… Read More
Type: Resources
Hospital sustainability programs reduce costs and enhance the quality of patient care. However, given the long list of priorities that hospitals must tackle, sustainability too often falls by the wayside. Today, the benefits of sustainability are too important to ignore. The operating room is often the largest generator of revenue, as well as the largest consumer of supply costs and the biggest generator of waste. Sustainability in the operating room is a multipronged initiative that can include, but is not limited to, recycling and reprocessing equipment; reducing prescription drug waste;… Read More
Type: Resources
(Delivering community benefit: Climate and health toolkit) This climate and health toolkit is designed to help environmental leads introduce a new framing of climate and health to their community benefit colleagues. It introduces tools and resources to help community benefit staff identify climate-related health risks in their communities, current projects that have climate co-benefits, and how to integrate climate and health into the community health needs assessment process.
Type: Resources
Two weeks ago, my daughter Franni and I (along with two other moms and their 8th grade girls) embarked on a volunteer trip to Jaibon, Dominican Republic through a not for profit— Outreach 360. We spent the week teaching English to children aged kindergarten through sixth grade and worked on a project associated with a boy’s orphanage that homed 22 amazing boys. The school principal and orphanage founder were one in the same – “La Tia” – the Aunt.
Students
I was able to connect this experience to my passion for health care sustainability by going online to identify the local hospital. I… Read More
Type: Press
Dr. Aparna Bole is a pediatrician and national climate and health leader who has direct expertise in leading sustainability efforts for a multi-hospital academic health system. She is particularly interested in the intersection between environmental stewardship, environmental justice, and pediatric public health. Most recently, she served as a senior consultant in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Climate Change and Health Equity, and she is an adjunct associate professor of pediatrics at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland. Bole has… Read More
Type: Staff
Natalie Baker is a medical student at Harvard Medical School (HMS). Born and raised in Northern California, she completed her undergraduate education at Stanford University, where she witnessed the devastating health impacts of wildfire and heat on Bay Area communities and began organizing around climate change and health equity. During medical school, Baker has taken on numerous leadership roles in climate and health advocacy, including spearheading the development of a four-year longitudinal, competency-based climate change, environmental, and health curriculum at HMS and serving as… Read More
Type: Staff
Some traditional cleaning products contain ingredients that have been linked to occupational asthma. It is possible for hospitals to maintain optimal infection prevention and control while also reducing staff, patient, and visitor exposure to harmful chemicals present in many traditional hospital cleaners.
Green cleaning goal
Inventory cleaning products and purchase 90% Green Seal or UL ECOLOGO certified cleaning products in the following categories: carpet, window, all purpose, bathroom, and general floor care
For the most commonly used cleaning products, “greener” cleaners can be… Read More
Type: Basic page
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Practice Greenhealth is the leading sustainable health care organization, delivering environmental solutions to more than 1,500 hospitals and health systems in the United States and Canada. Partnership opportunities include hospitals, health systems, community health organizations, NGOs, nonprofits, government, academic institutions, and the health care value chain.