ISSA Webinar on Social security, health care and environmental protection: Gaps and strategies
Having a considerable impact on the environment, the healthcare sector can play a leading role in addressing climate change. Efforts to reduce healthcare’s carbon footprint are fostered through diverse actions by hospitals, clinics and health professionals. This includes encouraging the eco-responsible behaviour of patients, while avoiding putting the financial burden of “green” actions on the patient.
Broader measures involve public health, environmental policy, mobility, urban planning and more. A coordinated approach is therefore needed to reduce the carbon footprint, consumption and waste, while ensuring adequate, effective and sustainable healthcare systems. New measures can even offer opportunities to better control health care spending, as they call for improvements in the management of environmental risk factors.
Therefore, social security institutions need to consider the broad field of actions in developing innovative methods and levers for more sustainable health care. Despite the urgency, many initiatives are only recent and institutions can benefit from sharing experiences and good practices to gain time and save resources.
This second ISSA webinar on social security, healthcare and environmental protection allowed participants to dive deeper into the gaps and strategies, providing international perspectives and country cases to take the urgent actions one step further. Featuring a keynote presentation by Sonia Roschnik, Exective Director of the Geneva Sustainability Centre, the need for healthcare leaders to take their first actions, or accelerate their journey to sustainability, was outlined to a global audience.
Presentations are recordings from the webinar are accessible.
