About the Sustainability Leadership Programme for the Health Care Sector

The health care sector has recognised climate change and resource depletion as being one of the greatest threats to the health and wellbeing of current and future generations, the solution to which is closely aligned with other challenges such as an ageing population, the increased prevalence of chronic diseases, limited resources and financial constraints, and increasing public and professional expectations.

The programme will help participants develop strategic responses to the challenges for the health care sector, based on the best available evidence and the different policy contexts in which participants work.

Early action to reduce carbon emissions and natural resource depletion can provide multiple benefits for the health of individuals and populations and for the benefit of the health system itself.

Better models of patient care can empower patients and the public, offering real incentives to promote health and prevent illness, bringing direct cost savings, and building resilience into all aspects of the health sector.

This programme looks at patient care and health outcomes as the starting points and recognises that the challenges and solutions to health and wellbeing in the 21st century are inextricably linked to our social, physical and economic environment.

The programme’s overall objectives are to:

• Bring together health sector leaders who are involved in large-scale change in their organisation, sector or clinical area to share the knowledge, policy context and skills necessary to deliver a sustainable future health service;
• To share across organisational and international boundaries the potential solutions to the challenges faced by health care organisations and professionals to bring about the relevant changes;
• To create networks of strategic, operational, and thought leaders in sustainable healthcare.

The broad outcomes of the programme will be to: 

• Allow participants to explore and share their understanding of the latest research, policy changes and case studies on sustainable models of health care, in a rapidly changing social, financial and physical climate;
• Understand how sustainability is being and can be embedded as part of the health quality agenda, with sustainability being a solution-based approach to the multiple challenges facing health services globally;
• Explore the co-benefits of approaches which enhance environmental sustainability, health and financial savings;
• Explore the ways in which stakeholders can be engaged to ensure progress is both strategic and operational and where such progress is collaborative, creative and part of a more fundamental route map in health service modernisation.