Insight 29: Greener Health Systems: Where to Start

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Welcome to CU Now Insights.

I'm Rebecca McEnroy.

In the summer of 2021, a heat dome settled over the Pacific Northwest and pushed temperatures to 116 degrees in Portland and 108 in Seattle.

Cities built for nothing close to those temperatures.

On the hottest day alone, more than a thousand people across the region went to emergency rooms for heat-related illnesses and hundreds of people died.

For a health system, climate change is not a distant forecast.

It is a health risk to patients and a strain on infrastructure, systems and communities.

In this insight from Episode 104, Practicing Green Health, Nurse Beth Schenk, Chief Environmental Stewardship Officer at Providence, walks us through how one of the largest nonprofit health systems in the country turned a carbon negative pledge into daily operations.

Shank describes a hospital where unprecedented heat warped doors and window frames, then lays out the response, measuring resource use, cost, and emissions across every hospital, working two tracks at once by cutting future emissions while adapting care, a strategy that starts with caregivers and communities who understand the work best.