Since 2008 the Centre for Sustainable Healthcare (CSH) has engaged healthcare professionals, patients, and the wider community to understand the connections between health and the environment and reduce healthcare’s resource footprint.
CSH’s work is guided by the principles of sustainable clinical practice:
- Prevention
- Patient empowerment and self care
- Lean systems
- Low carbon alternatives
CSH programmes equip healthcare professionals and organisations with methods and metrics for sustainable models of care:
- Sustainable Specialties Programme
- Carbon Footprinting and Triple Bottom Line Analysis
- Education and Training
- Sustainability in Quality Improvement*
- The Green Team Competition
- Green Space for Health
- Sustainable Healthcare Peer Networks
* CSH’s Sustainability in Quality Improvement (or SusQI) recognises that there are finite environmental, social and financial resources available to deliver a high standard of patient care. The overall goal of incorporating sustainability into quality improvement is to maximise sustainable value. This means to deliver the best possible health outcomes with minimum financial and environmental costs, while adding positive social value at every opportunity.
CSH was born in and will always have its heart in Oxford, England, but our expanding team of international experts is situated all over the UK, the EU and beyond. CSH has grown into the world’s foremost institution for sustainable healthcare in research and practice and has had a positive impact on so much of the healthcare system in the UK and beyond.
From measuring and reducing our own carbon footprint to prioritising the health, wellbeing, and work/life balance of those in our team, the CSH team practices what they preach every day. In line with our sustainable ethos, we minimise the daily commute by working online. This provides us with the freedom and efficiency to tap into the best and brightest minds in their fields while making a positive impact on the environment in the way we work.
By building its own research base, best practice recommendations and an ever-growing bank of case studies, it has fulfilled its goal of bringing all of that expert knowledge into action, changing clinical care and influencing policy at the highest level.
As CSH goes from strength to strength, so too does its message that healthcare can be sustainable.