Health Care Climate Learning Initiative
Stronger together: Shared learning to achieve shared goals
Together with our partners around the world, Health Care Without Harm convened representatives from 98 health care organizations spanning 20 countries to share their learnings from implementing decarbonization and climate resilience initiatives. The Health Care Climate Learning Initiative began with a series of workshops in 2023 that brought together health care leaders to discuss proven practices, share challenges, and collaborate on climate goals and strategies.
The proven practices shared by health care organizations around the world as part of the Health Care Climate Learning Initiative were used to develop step-by-step guidance, Sustainable, climate-smart health care guidance: Actions to achieve net zero while centering health equity, resilience, and adaptive capacity.
Initiative objectives
- Foster bi-directional and multi-directional learning among Race to Zero health care participants – a cohort of hospitals and health systems defining the leading edge of health care decarbonization by committing to net-zero emissions.
- Identify a set of lessons learned that can inform the health care sector as it seeks to align with the ambitions of the Paris Agreement.
- Identify interconnections and model approaches linking health care decarbonization, community resilience, and health equity.
- Identify strategies that strengthen the established global network and bolster our ability to support Race to Zero’s health care members around the world as they decarbonize and build resilient health systems.
- Support the acceleration, broadening, and deepening of health care’s trajectory to zero emissions, climate resilience, and health equity.
Participating health care organizations submitted case studies demonstrating progress in one or more of the following areas.
Learning objectives
- Gathering support and resource allocation from leadership, and an expressed commitment to climate action
- Baselining and estimating emissions and risks, strategies, and action plans
- Developing a carbon or climate management plan to improve facility- and community-based climate adaptation and resilience
- High-impact interventions to reduce emissions and build resilience and adaptive capacity
Case study videos
Support for this project was provided by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Global Ideas for U.S. Solutions team. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.