Health Care Community Gathers at CleanMed 2012, the Nation’s Most Influential Conference on Sustainable Health Care

Denver, CO — Hospital Administrators, clinicians and staff as well as businesses and organizations servicing the health care community are gathered in Denver, CO, to discuss progress and map out new strategies for greening the health care sector. CleanMed, the nation’s most important and influential conference on sustainable health care, is holding its 2012 conference April 30-May 3 in the Mile High City.

Keynote speakers at the conference will be Richard Jackson, MD, MPH, Professor and Chair, Environmental Health Sciences, UCLA School of Public Health; and Jeffrey E. Thompson, MD, Chief Executive Officer of Gundersen Lutheran Health System.

Richard J. Jackson has done extensive work in the impact of the environment on health, particularly relating to children. Dr. Jackson chaired the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Environmental Health. He did extensive work on pesticides in California, and has also focused on epidemiology, infectious diseases and toxicology. Over the past decade much of his work has focused on how the 'built environment' including how architecture and urban planning affect health. He recently served on the Board of Directors of the American Institute of Architects.

Jeffrey E. Thompson, MD, is chief executive officer and chairman of the boards of Gundersen Lutheran Health System, and a practicing pediatric intensivist and neonatologist. He is a founding member and past board chair of the Wisconsin Collaborative for Healthcare Quality. Presently, he is chairman of the board of the La Crosse Medical Health Science Consortium. He is currently chief executive officer of Gundersen Lutheran.

The conference is sponsored each year by Health Care Without Harm, the campaign for environmentally responsible healthcare, and Practice Greenhealth, a membership association for hospitals and businesses engaged in sustainable health care. In addition to serving as Practice Greenhealth’s main annual membership meeting, CleanMed is also the venue for the Practice Greenhealth Sustainability awards. This year more than 280 awards will be bestowed for various hospital and business achievements in health care sustainability.

CleanMed 2012 will offer sessions on green building and design, waste management, reducing energy consumption, greening the supply chain, sustainable hospital food services, and other matters dealing with hospital design and operations. Other sessions will focus on issues such as climate and health, quality improvements through sustainability, making sustainability “stick” by incorporating it into the culture, and community benefits and the IRS. Special sessions will be held on each of the components of the Healthier Hospitals Challenge. On the last day of the conference, two special sessions will be held on ongoing research in health care sustainability, and using “lean principles” to deliver better patient outcomes with fewer resources.

In addition to the awards and educational sessions, the CleanMed Exhibits and Exposition is showcasing vendors and service providers that offer sustainable products and services to the health care sector. A special section of the Exposition is dedicated to Greening the OR (Operating Room), a new program that helps clinicians and other hospital personnel incorporate sustainability into the operating arena.

“This conference is the most important sustainability event of the year for the health care sector,” stated Peter Diamond, director of CleanMed. “It is intended as not only a learning experience, but as a way to set out the health care sustainability agenda for the coming year.”

For more information on CleanMed 2012, please visit www.cleanmed.org. Members of the media are invited to attend CleanMed 2012 at no charge.

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.