Health Care Without Harm is an international organization dedicated to providing resources, knowledge, and inspiration for the health care sector to help reduce its environmental impact. We have been advocating for the environment and our health since 1996.
Our vision
Health care mobilizes its ethical, economic, and political influence to create an ecologically sustainable, equitable, and healthy world.
Our mission
Health Care Without Harm seeks to transform health care worldwide so that it reduces its environmental impact, becomes a community anchor for sustainability, and a leader in the global movement for environmental health and justice.
Our values
- We are impactful
- We strive for justice
- We are collaborative
- We embody health
- We act with integrity
Our network
Over three decades, Health Care Without Harm has built the most extensive global network at the intersection of human and planetary health. This network offers our best chance for scaling and sustaining proven climate and health solutions.
Our affiliated network Practice Greenhealth 🡥 is the innovation hub scaling the work of Health Care Without Harm. It is the leading sustainable health care organization, delivering environmental solutions to more than 1,700 hospitals and health systems in the United States and Canada, including the Veterans Administration health system and the Army’s MedCom facilities. Partnership opportunities 🡥 include NGOs, nonprofits, government, academic institutions, and the health care value chain.
1 in 4 health facilities in the United States including 1,700+ members with all 50 states and every type of hospital represented.
Beyond the U.S. and Canada, our global hospital network, Global Green and Healthy Hospitals 🡥, represents over 70,000 hospitals and health centers, treating hundreds and millions of patients in 86 countries.
Health Care Without Harm has regional teams in the United States, Europe, Southeast Asia, and Latin America where staff work on community-based projects as well as national and global initiatives. We also have strategic partnerships with organizations in Australia, Brazil, China, India, Nepal, and South Africa as well as joint projects with the United Nations Development Programme and World Bank.
Our history: A look back at our first 25 years
Health Care Without Harm has spent more than 27 years innovating, piloting, and implementing health care systems change efforts and partnerships in the health care sector in order to activate all of its assets – economic, political, moral, clinical, financial – in service of environmental health and justice.
Health Care Without Harm was founded on the basis of environmental health and justice – that every person deserves the right to live in a healthy environment, while recognizing people of color and people who are economically disadvantaged are disproportionately impacted by environmental degradation, resulting in elevated rates of disease, poverty, and shorter life expectancy. We activate the power of the health care sector to address the harms and inequities in their practices and drive a new social contract between health care and the communities they serve.
Health Care Without Harm has served as a systems orchestrator for the global transformation of the health care sector to embrace environmental sustainability within core operations and leverage the trusted role and voice of clinicians to advocate for “first, do no harm.”
- Eliminated the market for mercury thermometers and blood pressure devices in the United States by 2008 and collaborated with the World Health Organization to win the Minamata Treaty, a global phase out of mercury measuring devices in 2013.
- Catalyzed the closure of more than 4,400 carcinogenic medical waste incinerators, helping hospitals save money, reuse materials, reprocess surgical supplies, and utilize alternative waste treatment strategies.
- Launched the Health Care Climate Challenge 🡥, which has over 300 participating institutions representing more than 22,000 hospitals across 40 countries committing to effective climate action focused on resilience, decarbonization, and leadership.
- Facilitated historic decarbonization and resilience commitments in over 50 countries through the COP26 Health Programme 🡥 in partnership with UNFCCC and WHO.
- Developed Greenhealth Approved 🡥 to help health care providers quickly identify safe, sustainable products by reducing the time-consuming, sometimes costly product reviews needed to research and interpret sustainability features.
- Mobilized over 120 hospitals to sign up for the Cool Food Pledge 🡥, a platform to help hospitals offer diners more of what they want while slashing food-related greenhouse gas emissions, saving costs, and improving health.
- Launched the Impact Purchasing Commitment 🡥, in partnership with the Healthcare Anchor Network and the support of 12 hospitals to direct health care purchasing toward industries that decrease their carbon footprint, produce safer products and services, and grow economic opportunities for people of color- and women-owned businesses by at least $1 billion over five years.
- Created and deployed a strategy to “green operating rooms 🡥,” adopted by hundreds of hospitals, saving money and valuable resources while reducing pollution and waste.
- Designed and implemented a successful strategy pressuring furniture manufacturers to eliminate toxic flame retardants from furnishings 🡥 sold to the health care sector. More than 85 manufacturers have developed lists of products to meet our Healthy Interiors criteria.
- Instituted and expanded Practice Greenhealth’s flagship event, CleanMed 🡥, the premier conference for leaders in health care sustainability.
- Supported the work of the Sambhavna Clinic in Bhopal, India 🡥, which has been working for over 25 years to heal people affected by the Bhopal gas tragedy and to fight for environmental cleanup in Bhopal.