Net zero healthcare: a call for clinician action


Health professionals are well positioned to effect change by reshaping individual practice, influencing healthcare organisations, and setting clinical standards, argue Dr. Jodi Sherman and colleagues.

Achieving net zero emissions in healthcare will be possible only with radical and immediate engagement of the clinical community. The covid-19 pandemic has served as a wake-up call for high income health systems that resources are finite and globally interdependent, vulnerable to massive surges in demands and simultaneous infrastructure disruption, and that inequities in access to care threaten health and wellbeing for everyone.

During the first months of the pandemic, the medical community united at a historic pace, rapidly sharing information, redesigning models of care, conserving and innovating resources, and moving towards a circular economy. In comparison, the task of transforming healthcare culture and practice to halve healthcare emissions by 2030 as recommended by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change seems entirely feasible.

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