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Practice Greenhealth is excited to announce the recipients of this year's Environmental Excellence Awards, recognizing health care facilities across the country that have maintained and strengthened their commitment to sustainability amidst a pandemic. Health care institutions have found innovative ways to make progress on reducing their environmental impacts while facing unique challenges in the past year. These facilities recognize the intrinsic link between environment, climate, and health, and are working to lead by example.
Hospitals reported achievement across 11 different areas of… Read More
Type: Press
In 2022, over 600 Practice Greenhealth facilities signed onto the HHS pledge and publicly committed to "develop and release a climate resilience plan for continuous operations by the end of 2023, anticipating the needs of groups in their community that experience a disproportionate risk of climate-related harm." Drawing from Health Care Without Harm's resilience framework of "facilities, community, and public infrastructure," this cohort provides guidance and a structured approach for drafting climate resilience plans for health systems that have signed onto the HHS Pledge.
Cohort… Read More
Type: Basic page
Practice Greenhealth has been collecting sustainability performance data from hospitals and health systems for over 20 years. As sustainability expectations have evolved, Practice Greenhealth has continued to refine the data and metrics we utilize to measure progress and benchmark performance. Below are some helpful tips to help ensure you are collecting and providing data in the correct format – which supports your scores on the application and better trend analysis for the sector.
Before starting your application, be sure to review our advice and five tips for success below.
1. Order of… Read More
Type: Basic page
Plant-Forward Future is a curated set of resources from Practice Greenhealth, Health Care Without Harm, and our partners that will help health care facilities set a plant-forward goal, menu, and market plant-forward dishes, and track their progress.
HOW-TO GUIDEWHY PLANT-FORWARD?
The resources further below are divided into three categories:
Implementation. There are multiple strategies a health care facility can use to implement a plant-forward dining program. Top strategies include: increasing the number and variety of plant-forward dishes, improving the taste and appearance of plant-… Read More
Type: Toolkit
By John Strong Principal of John Strong, LLC and serves as president of Greenhealth Management
As you shake the sleep off, you realize that the sounds of your 12-year-old daughter’s latest asthma attack woke you. You determine immediately that this is going to require another trip to your local health care provider’s emergency room. When you pull up to the door of the emergency room, housed in a brand-new facility built by the largest integrator of care in your state, you feel palpable relief. There’s no wait—and soon a physician, nurses and others have her situation under control.
No one… Read More
Type: Press
Increased awareness around the presence of pharmaceuticals in drinking water has resulted in closer scrutiny and increased regulatory oversight of pharmaceutical waste. Evidence of feminization of fish raised a red flag and resulted in more studies, closer scrutiny, and concern for human health and the environment. The U.S. Geological Survey has done extensive work to characterize the kinds and volumes of pharmaceuticals ending up in waterways. Learn more at U.S. Geological Survey's Emerging Contaminants Project.
While hazardous pharmaceutical waste management is a headline news item at… Read More
Type: Resources
Health care institutions throughout the country recognize the urgent need to reduce rates of obesity and chronic illness as well as their associated health care costs.
Sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) contribute to the increased prevalence of obesity and associated chronic diseases that go along with weight gain. The production, consumption, and waste associated with sugar-sweetened and bottled beverages have numerous negative environmental consequences.
A better option for hydration and quenching thirst is water and in the United States, tap water has been proven to be just as safe, or… Read More
Type: Basic page
Rethinking Environmentally Preferred Purchasing: A Case Study in Implementation at Kaiser Permanente
By Vanessa Lochner, Kaiser Permanente's director for the Environmentally Preferred Purchasing program
Achieving an environmentally preferable purchasing program is simpler than many people realize. From the start, it’s important to determine the desired results.
At Kaiser Permanente, our decision to pursue a more rigorous EPP program was motivated by five environmental priorities: cleaner energy, safer chemicals, less waste, healthier and more sustainable food and water conservation. We’ve achieved multiple successes over the past several years. The EPP program delivers over $63 million… Read More
Type: Press
The Stephanie Davis Waste Reduction and Pollution Prevention Award and Scholarship is an enduring tribute to Davis, who worked with Health Care Without Harm at its inception in 1996. Davis was a tireless champion of the movement toward sustainable health care who worked to reduce waste and eliminate the use of harmful chemicals and materials in health care products and processes. The awardees will receive scholarships to attend CleanMed 2022.
Join us in celebrating this year’s five awardees.
David Blitzer
“I am so humbled and excited to be receiving this award. I have a strong personal… Read More
Type: Press
Reducing surplus food is at the top of the EPA food recovery hierarchy because it has the greatest financial, environmental, and social impacts.
Use our guidance to determine which source reduction strategies will work best for your facility and how to integrate them into your standard operating policies and procedures. Track your impact, and share results with leadership.
Assemble the team
In addition to your core team, you may want to include people with roles such as the executive chef, nutrition and dietetics, inventory manager, prep, line cooks, catering, and front of house servers… Read More
Type: Basic page
Join Practice Greenhealth
Practice Greenhealth is the health care sector’s go-to source for information, tools, data, resources, and expert technical support on sustainability initiatives that help hospitals and health systems meet their health, financial, and community goals.