Tools and resources

Community gardens and farms

  • Food
  • Community Benefit and Wellness
(Health Care Without Harm) Community gardens can take a variety of forms including rooftop gardens, schoolyard gardens, backyard gardens and neighborhood gardens.

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Farmers markets, mobile markets and community-supported agriculture

  • Food
  • Community Benefit and Wellness
(Health Care Without Harm) Farmers markets, mobile markets, and community-supported agriculture (CSA) programs promote access to healthy foods and can strengthen sustainable food systems by supporting local producers while improving the affordability of fresh, local produce for low-income communities. 

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Choosing environmentally preferable food service ware: Reusable, sustainable, and bio-based products

  • EPP
  • Food
  • Sustainable procurement
  • Sustainable food service operations
  • Waste
  • Guide
(Health Care Without Harm) To assist health care purchasers in choosing environmentally preferable food service ware, Health Care Without Harm has created this guide for food service ware materials, including a survey for manufacturers.

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Integrating sustainability requirements into health care food service contracting

  • Food
  • Food Service
(Health Care Without Harm) There are many opportunities for hospitals to improve patient safety, worker safety, and the overall health of communities and the environment via their food service operations. By implementing environmentally preferable purchasing and other operational and maintenance strategies in food service, hospitals can help to reduce patient, worker and community exposure to…

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Strategies to increase sustainable food options via GPOs and distributors

  • Food
  • Food Service
  • Local and sustainable purchasing
There are many strategies a hospital or health system can use to increase the availability of sustainably produced food options via existing supply channels and relationships. This document offers several strategies and resources to implement.

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Health and economic benefits from hospital investment in a sustainable food system

  • Food
  • Food System
  • White Paper
  • Guide
The support of health care administrators is needed to link the healing mission of hospitals to the purchasing and serving of sustainably produced food that is healthy for patients, staff, and guests. These purchasing patterns will help to transform the food system at large into a system that supports human health, environmental stewardship, and social justice for farm workers The current food…

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Health and economic benefits from hospital investment in a sustainable food system

Sample email: Employee community supported agriculture offering

  • Tool
  • Employee engagement
  • Food
  • Community Benefit and Wellness
  • Toolkit
(Employee engagement toolkit) Here is a sample marketing email that your system can use to internally promote the employee community-supported agriculture offering.

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Less Meat, Better Meat Tracking Tool

  • Food
  • Less Meat
  • Food Tool
This tool is designed to support hospitals in tracking overall reduction in meat purchasing and increases in purchases of meat and poultry raised without routine, non-therapeutic antibiotics, and aligns with the data tracking needs at Practice Greenhealth.

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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.

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