How Hospitals Can Take a Role in Community Climate Resilience
In recent posts, we highlighted the health impacts of climate change, the health care sector’s carbon footprint, and the top actions hospitals can take to reduce their climate impacts. In addition to taking steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, hospitals can implement strategies to build the climate resilience of their own facilities and operations while also helping promote climate preparedness and resilience in their broader communities.
Hospitals must continue to provide care in the face of extreme weather. As climate change continues to increase the intensity and duration of extreme weather events like hurricanes, flooding, and fires, hospitals must make their facilities more resilient and work with their communities on emergency preparedness. Read on to learn about specific actions hospitals can take to adapt to a changing climate and help build community climate resilience.
Managing Risks and Building Resilience
According to Health Care Without Harm, an important climate resilience-building first step for health care organizations is identifying and managing extreme weather risks. To do this, hospitals should first aim to understand risks and impacts, using forecasts and predictive models to make assessments of how changes to climate, extreme weather, and resulting health impacts play out for the organization and its surrounding communities.
The next step is to assess the likelihood and magnitude of each risk’s impact to the business, and the final step is to establish a response and execution plan that includes strategies to avoid, reduce, and transfer risk. These strategies might include things like relocating critical equipment and generators to areas less at risk of exposure to flooding and other hazards.
Preparing Patients for Climate Change
Health care providers play a critical role in protecting the health of patients and their communities. To prepare patients for the impacts of climate change and help improve community resilience, providers can:
Identify patients at risk from impacts of extreme weather and emerging vector borne illnesses
Educate patients on emerging health risks and make a care plan to mitigate those risks
Make sure climate change impacts are addressed in disease management and care protocols (like advising asthma patients to check the Air Quality Index whenever it is hot or windy, or there are wildfires in the region).
Incorporate a climate change assessment into home visits or home environment assessments, and refer patients for appropriate resources.
Connect patients to community resources for climate resilience (like LIHEAP, the low-income home energy assistance program).
Working with Local Governments and Organizations
Hospitals’ ability to withstand disasters is deeply intertwined with what happens in surrounding communities. As institutions tasked with protecting public health, hospitals can play a significant role in promoting climate resilience in their communities by working with local partners including government agencies, utilities, cultural and academic institutions, economic development organizations, NGOs, and community groups to promote climate smart and resilience-building policies and actions. Hospitals can leverage their purchasing power and social connections to protect health and improve long-term climate resilience in the communities they serve.
Examples of ways that U.S. health systems are promoting climate smart policies and building local climate resilience include:
Helping counter attacks on state energy efficiency and clean energy programs by providing data, signing onto support letters, sharing case studies, and publishing physician-led Op-Eds and Letters to the Editor (Ohio health systems and the Ohio Hospital Association)
Implementing strategies to buy local, hire local, live local, and connect community, improving the prospects and income of people who live in surrounding neighborhoods through the Greater University Circle Initiative (Cleveland Clinic, University Hospitals, and Case Western)
Investing in the local food economy to build resilience in underserved communities (Kaiser Permanente)
Partnering with a local carbon capture program to offset emissions through tree planting (Seattle Children’s Hospital)
Useful Resources
Check out the following resources to learn more about best practices for building climate resilience in your health care organization.
The Department of Health and Human Services has developed the Sustainable and Climate Resilient Health Care Facilities Toolkit, which provides a suite of online tools and resources that highlight emerging best practices for developing sustainable and climate resilient health care facilities.
Health Care Without Harm’s Safe Haven in the Storm resource examines extreme weather's bottom line damages to hospitals and outlines a multi-pronged approach for taking action.
The Hospital Preparedness Program is a federally-funded initiative that supports regional health care system preparedness in order to improve patient outcomes, minimize the need for supplemental state and federal resources during emergencies, and enable rapid recovery.
The World Health Organization published a guide for climate resilient and environmentally sustainable healthcare facilities.
By utilizing these resources and following the strategies outlined above, hospitals can prepare their own facilities and operations for the impacts of a changing climate while also helping build community climate resilience. To learn more about strategies for building climate resilience in your organization in support of your community’s overall climate goals, contact us for a consultation.
