health care

Register for CleanMed Webinar Series

| strausbaugh.76

CleanMed is the premier conference on environmental sustainability in the health care sector. In prepapration for their annual conference in Salt Lake City in May, CleanMed is offering FREE webinars on the topic of sustainability in healthcare.

Reducing food waste to feed your community & save money

April 25, 2024; 3 p.m. EST Register Here

Food should feed people, not landfills. Food waste not only contributes to climate change, but is a missed opportunity for addressing food insecurity in our communities.

Learn from Practice Greenhealth partners about the creative and comprehensive approaches they have used to reduce wasted food, and how doing so has saved money, reduced their climate impact, and supported hunger relief in their communities.

The value of clinical leadership & governance structure in advancing sustainability

May 2, 2024; 3 p.m. EST Register Here

Clinical care is a driving factor of health care emissions and pollution. As the largest percentage of a hospital’s workforce, it is critical to engage, educate, and empower clinicians to lead change. Health care organizations gain many benefits from positioning a health professional in a leadership role within their sustainability governance structure.

In this session, hear about Ascension’s Clinical Work Group within their Environmental Impact and Sustainability program, which harnesses organizational decision-making pathways toward decreasing the environmental impact of clinical care.

Learn about the inclusion of health professional leadership within Ascension’s governance structure and processes and programming for clinical sustainability initiatives including desflurane elimination, improving regulated medical waste segregation, and educating clinicians about conserving resources.

Earth Month webinar: Greening the OR

| Susannah Kistler

Join the Green Team ERG on April 5 at noon

In celebration of Earth Day April 22, the Green Team ERG will be hosting a variety events all month, including webinars, plant giveaways, and a cooking demo. Become a member via this link to receive our newsletter with more details.

To start Earth Month, join the Green Team from noon to 1 p.m. April 5 for a webinar with Vidya Raman, MD, MBA, FASA, FAAP, on sustainability in the operating room.

Some topics that will be covered:

– Sustainability as whole

– Health care contribution and perioperative operating room impact

– Anesthesia and surgery carbon footprint

– What we are doing at the Ohio State Wexner Medical Center

– Future plans at the Wexner Medical Center

Dr. Raman is a clinical professor in the Department of Anesthesiology at The Ohio State University College of Medicine. She has held a faculty appointment since 2007 and transitioned her clinical practice from Nationwide Children’s Hospital to the Ohio State Wexner Medical Center in 2022. She’s completed training in pediatrics, anesthesiology and pediatric anesthesia. Her research interests center around perioperative sustainability. She has given many national talks, podcasts and papers on the topic and hopes to make an impact on climate action through her work on perioperative sustainability. She has not only helped with decreasing Ohio State’s operating room carbon footprint, but also cost containment. Her work has saved over $100,000 in in 2023. She looks forward to making more of an impact and moving clinical engagement of sustainability beyond the perioperative spaces into other clinical areas.

Register for the webinar here.

Can’t make the webinar? A recording will be sent out to registrants and posted on this site.

Not part of the Green Team yet? You can join here: go.osu.edu/greenteamsignup

— By Judy Gregory

Reusable sharps container program diverts 70 tons of plastic annually at medical center

A hand dropping a syringe into a Stericycle reusable sharps container
| Susannah Kistler

The Stericycle reusable sharps container program started in 2021 at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, and since the full implementation, it has been diverting over 70 tons of plastic away from the landfill each year!

How does this work? 

Every reusable container from Stericycle replaces the use of up to 600 containers. This significantly reduces plastic and cardboard going to landfills, which supports our zero waste and carbon footprint reduction goals.