The human and health impacts of climate change are becoming increasingly hard to ignore. Extreme weather events are disrupting more and more lives and businesses while also exacerbating chronic health conditions like asthma, expanding the range of infectious diseases, and worsening mental illness. In 2018, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimated that to avoid catastrophic changes to our climate, we need to cut our greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 and get to net zero emissions by 2050. It’s time for all of us to take the threat and opportunity of climate change seriously, but how can businesses make meaningful change? How does sustainability fit into the competing priorities so many of us face? We spoke with leaders at four major U.S. health systems — Cleveland Clinic, Kaiser Permanente, Boston Medical Center (BMC), and Partners Healthcare — that are finding solutions.
Climate change strikes at the very core of health systems whose mission is to keep people healthy. They are also affected financially and structurally by the rising frequency of extreme weather events, and they are major contributors to carbon emissions. Even distant climate events can impact them. Consider what happened when Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico in 2017. The storm killed people and knocked out power. It also disrupted supply chains. Suddenly, across the United States, doctors and patients faced shortages of critical intravenous fluids and medications because Puerto Rico manufactures IV bags for the rest of the country, and the plants were severely damaged in the storm. For months, nurses had to resort to standing at the patient bedside slowly injecting medications by syringe instead of letting the medication drip in from an IV bag.
On all fronts, health care systems are on the front lines of climate change. But they are not sitting idle in the face of these threats. The leaders we spoke with are on track to make their facilities carbon neutral between 2020 and 2027 while building climate resiliency, even as they expand their operations, tend to the bottom line, and provide excellent health care. How are they managing that? And what lessons can businesses across sectors glean from their successes?
Mission-driven Success
Want to publish your own articles on DistilINFO Publications?
Send us an email, we will get in touch with you.
As with any business initiative, taking action on climate change starts with the mission. For health systems, climate change directly impacts the health of patients and communities. We are only as healthy as the environment in which we live, and as climate change worsens, more and more people face the health consequences of wildfires, hurricanes, floods, and forced migration globally from failed crops, droughts, and resulting political unrest.
For John Messervy, the Director of Capital and Facilities Planning of Partners Healthcare, the biggest local threat is water. Boston is situated where two major ocean currents collide: melting Arctic ice spills from the north and meets stronger storms coming from the south. This puts the city at particular risk for sea level rise and catastrophic floods. Preparing for this — and doing what they can to prevent it — is a vital part of serving the health system’s mission. “The people of Boston aren’t fleeing because there will be flooding in the future,” Messervy told us. “It’s our responsibility to build our response plans to keep serving the community, no matter what happens.”
Also in Boston, Bob Biggio, Senior Vice President of Facilities and Support Services of Boston Medical Center, motivates his team by reminding them that everything they do goes back to serving patients and the community. “My north star is the hospital’s mission to make Boston the world’s healthiest urban population by 2030,” he said. “This means doing our part – through carbon reduction and resiliency – to protect our patients from the impacts of climate change.”
In Cleveland, Ohio, Jon Utech, Senior Director of the Office for a Healthy Environment at the Cleveland Clinic, conveys to people across the organization and community that the magnitude of climate change means that everyone needs to engage. “Climate change is a clear and present danger now,” Utech said. “We need to be ready to respond to immediate and increased threats such as hurricanes, floods, wildfires, and tornados. Our caregivers need to understand how climate change is impacting disease patterns and population vulnerabilities to better care for our patients.”
Part of what is driving health systems to take action is that they are experiencing the serious impacts of climate change even now. Kathy Gerwig, Vice President of Employee Safety, Health and Wellness and Environmental Stewardship Officer of Kaiser Permanente, recounted to us how their Santa Rosa Medical Center in California was impacted by catastrophic wildfires in 2017. Two hundred employees lost their homes, and the hospital had to close for weeks to clean and restock. During that time, people in the area found themselves struggling with smoke-related illness and trying to manage their medical needs without having their hospital to turn to. “The people who suffer the most from climate impacts are low income, very young, very old, and people with chronic conditions,” she said. ”In a healthcare setting, we have a responsibility to think about that.”
Date: October 17, 2019
Source: HBR
