The story of the Sambhavna Clinic, a non-profit holistic health clinic in Bhopal, India, built to treat those injured by the Union Carbide toxic gas release in 1984. enlarge video
Contact: Eileen Secrest 540-479-0168
Colleen Funkhouser 703-860-9790
Health Care Without Harm Announces Call for Nominations for Nursing Award
Reston, VA — Health Care Without Harm has announced a call for nominees for a major nursing award in the field of sustainable health care. The Charlotte Brody Award is given to a nurse (RN or LPN/LVN) whose story of environmental activism and accomplishment reflects a significant contribution to environmental health.
The Charlotte Brody Award is sponsored by the HCWH Nurses Workgroup in conjunction with the Luminary Project, which is an effort to capture the illuminating stories of nurses' activities to improve human health by improving the health of the environment. The stories on this website (www.TheLuminaryProject.org) show how nurses are creatively and strategically addressing environmental problems and illuminating the way towards safe hospitals; communities with clean air, land and water; and children born without toxic chemicals in their bodies. The Luminary Project is the collaboration of the Nurses Workgroup of Health Care Without Harm and the nurses and nursing organizations who are the Guiding Lights and Beacons for this Project.
The award will be presented at CleanMed, the international conference for health care sustainability, in Phoenix, AZ, in April 2011.
Charlotte Brody Award: This award honors Charlotte Brody, a registered nurse and activist, who has spent her life making the world a safer place for people around the globe. She is one of the founders of HCWH. The award seeks to recognize Nurse Luminaries who go beyond everyday nursing endeavors to proactively promote and protect environmental health, and who generate significant outcomes from their efforts. Potential awardees may be nominated by a colleague or member of the public, or may be self-nominated. Nominations are due by 5 pm Eastern on March 1, 2011. At least two letters of recommendation are required, with one being written by a registered professional nurse. More information is available at www.TheLuminaryProject.org.
Heath Care without Harm, an international coalition of more than 500 organizations in 53 countries, is working to transform the health care sector, without compromising patient safety or care, so that it is ecologically sustainable and no longer a source of harm to public health and the environment. To learn more about HCWH's work, visit our website at www.noharm.org, our YouTube channel at HCwithoutharm, and our twitter feed at hcwithoutharm.
Webinar: How Sustainable Hospitals Are Achieving Major Savings
Health Care Without Harm and The Commonwealth Fund present a webinar based on the recent groundbreaking findings on how hospitals can achieve savings and reduce their carbon footprint through sustainability programs. This one-hour webinar draws on the findings of a recent Health Care Without Harm Research Collaborative/ Commonwealth Fund study, "Can Sustainable Hospitals Help Bend the Health Care Cost Curve?" which shows that savings from interventions to reduce energy use and waste, and achieve operating room supply efficiencies could exceed $5.4 billion over five years and $15 billion over 10 years for the health care sector. In addition to detailing the study findings, the webinar includes presentations from two health systems about why they chose to focus on sustainability and what challenges and rewards are in store.
Key Resources
- Energy Impact Calculator
What are your facility's energy health impacts and costs? What can you do to improve them?
- Learn about Practice Greenhealth and the Healthcare Clean Energy Exchange
- Green Guide for Health Care Report:
A Prescriptive Path to Energy Efficiency for Hospitals
download report (pdf) read abstract (pdf) - Healthcare Energy Project Guidebook, designed to provide decision makers with knowledge about improving energy efficiency (pdf)
