We believe health systems must be reimagined as decarbonized anchors of healthier, resilient, more equitable communities that can survive and thrive in the face of a changing climate.
Prescription for resilient communities
Health care is at the epicenter of pandemics, climate disasters, and other public health emergencies. These crises highlight the deeply rooted connection between health care, community health, equity, and resilience.
Our anchor model for health systems and communities sparks collaboration and shows health organizations how to engage in equitable planning, decision-making, and solutions-building to build community resilience and address the disproportionate impacts the climate crisis has on underserved communties and the people who face the most risk.
Our vision
We envision health systems building physical, social, and economic conditions to support community health and well-being, harnessing the enormous economic power and influence of the health care sector to move beyond emergency care toward healing the harm that exists today in the form of ecological degradation, health vulnerabilities, and economic disparities. We support health care organizations in their role as anchor institutions as they collaborate with their communities to build resilience so that they can thrive amidst acute and chronic climate, economic, and health disruptions within the ecosystems that sustain them.
How will we do it?
“We believe that communities know what is best for their community, and the involvement of local stakeholders and partners from the start is critical to equitable processes and lasting progress.”
To achieve this vision, hospitals must break down internal silos, while building and repairing trust with communities by acting with greater humility, inclusion, and true partner engagement. This is referenced in the leadership principles that guide how we engage health care leaders.
We will facilitate deep, trusting partnerships among community-based organizations and health systems in select regions in order to build and test replicable models for collaborative action that advance climate mitigation, resilience, and equity.
Our work with community-based partners will align to the approach outlined in Anchored by health care: Strategies for health systems. We will also amplify and support the place-based and community-level work done outside of the United States through our strategic partners.
Our current place-based initiatives
In the city of Boston, public policymakers and health care institutions are focusing on improving health care’s resilience to climate change impacts, with an emphasis on anchoring community health and resilience.
Current work: Boston Green Ribbon Commission
Our current work reduces energy use and greenhouse gas emissions, and advances climate preparedness by health care facilities in greater Boston and around the region. We do this primarily through our role as coordinators of the Health Care Work Group of the Boston Green Ribbon Commission (GRC). The GRC is a unique cross-sector collaboration of over 30 CEOs working to support Boston’s climate goal, which is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2030, and 100% by 2050.
Metro Boston hospitals continue to make significant progress in GHG reduction
The 18% reduction in Metro Boston health care’s GHG emissions from 2011 to 2019 will result in a $20,628,769 decline in associated social costs, 835.7 fewer lost or restricted workdays per year, and 1.3 fewer premature deaths per year according to analysis from Health Care Without Harm’s Energy and Health Impact Calculator.
Reductions in the hospital sector's greenhouse gas emissions are coming from significant investments in low-impact hydro, wind, and solar power by Partners HealthCare and Boston Medical Center (BMC). Partners is working to make its entire health care system net carbon positive for all energy by 2025, and BMC expects all its energy to be climate neutral by 2018.
Results
- A first-in-the-nation metro area health care energy and greenhouse gas database: Years of energy data for 22 million square feet of metro Boston hospital space, including >24,000 records, has been uploaded into the EPA Portfolio Manager. A custom web interface helps track participants’ progress towards a 100% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
- Collaboration in support of energy efficiency policy advances at the city and state level, including active engagement with forward-thinking utilities, state policymakers, and others to make sure the health benefits of energy efficiency are properly valued, and to shape the Commonwealth’s utility energy efficiency programs in ways that enable health care facilities to make the deepest improvements possible. Similarly, we helped the City of Boston shape an innovative Energy Reporting and Disclosure Ordinance for all large commercial and multi-family buildings.
Learn more: Boston Green Ribbon Commission's Health Care Working Group 🡥
For more information on our work with the Boston Green Ribbon Commission, contact Tim Cronin, Massachusetts director of climate policy.
History
Health Care Without Harm hired its very first paid staff in Boston in 1996 to launch its medical waste incineration and medical mercury elimination campaigns. Ever since, HCWH Boston has continued to create and lead some of Health Care Without Harm’s most ambitious efforts, including toxics reduction, green building, cleaner energy, and environmental health community benefits.
Resilience 2.0: A summit and a vision
In January of 2017, Health Care Without Harm convened a summit about interconnected climate resiliency initiatives happening within the greater Boston area. The summit fostered a new dialogue about the role of the health sector in anchoring community health and resilience. It also created a network of organizations and champions who recognize each other, know what each other does, and can find ways to provide mutual, complementary support.
The summit initiated a revolutionary new approach for the city focused on leveraging community health and climate resilience as a key strategy in strengthening the health care sector’s climate preparedness.
Stakeholders published a report detailing their new vision and strategies, "Resilience 2.0: Healthcare’s Role in Anchoring Community Health and Resilience."
Top-takeaways:
- The health care sector should and can engage in climate public policy
- There is a business case for climate-resilient health care
- Innovative solutions to backup and reliable power generation for health care facilities and community providers are available and should be utilized
- It is necessary to create robust networks of partnerships.
- The lessons learned, questions raised and next steps are relevant to towns and cities everywhere, and there are plenty of examples.
The summit and report were made possible in part by sponsorship support from the Barr Foundation and co-hosted by Partners HealthCare to catalyze climate action planning for metro Boston health care service providers and allied stakeholders in the communities they serve.
The Regional Food System Initiative serves to increase and help coordinate institutional demand for local, sustainable, and equitably-produced food – prioritizing producers and processors owned by people of color.
Current work: Anchors in Resilient Communities
Anchors in Resilient Communities (ARC) is a multi-stakeholder collaborative model developed and coordinated by Health Care Without Harm and Emerald Cities Collaborative that leverages assets of anchor institutions and community partners to design equitable, regional economies. In partnership with the community, anchor institutions utilize the combination of their procurement and investments to address social determinants of health in the communities where they are located.
ARC East Bay is fostering a vibrant local food economy of food producers, microenterprise developments, and community-owned businesses that can meet the growing demand of anchor institutions in the region.
East Bay anchor institutions spend $6.8 billion a year on goods and services... ARC identified a high demand for healthy, sustainably made food products and services among multiple anchor institutions, presenting an opportunity to bolster local and regional food production.
– The Democracy Collaborative
The initiative participants include local farmers, food entrepreneurs, food and economic justice organizations, workforce non-profits, ARC anchor institution partners, and representatives from East Bay county and city governments.
The initiative is driven by 3 goals:
- Aggregate institutional demand for local and sustainable food products
- Increase community-owned food businesses and manufacturing opportunities
- Increase opportunities for local BIPOC producers who have been historically excluded from institutional markets.
The initiative does this by increasing contracting opportunities for “hyper-local” farmers and food entrepreneurs of color to enter the institutional market. ARC’s work with anchor institutions such as UC Berkeley, Stanford (University and Medical), and Common Spirit, has resulted in shifted procurement budgets where institutions are directly sourcing from local farmers and food producers such as Dig Deep Farms or through distributors such as Bay Cities Produce.
Learn more on the Anchors in Resilient Communities website []
Results
- More than 5 anchor institutions, including UC Davis Medical Center, Alameda Health System, Oakland Unified School District, and others are actively participating in ARC by sourcing locally from farmers of color. Other community organizations are participating in ARC by supporting the Food is Medicine coalition such as Project Open Hand.
- ARC has enabled total anchor food procurement purchases of over $270k for 2023. In addition to these purchases, a forward purchasing contract with Dig Deep Farms is being established.
- ARC’s institutional buyers included over 100 unique “value added products” in their food procurement orders.
- These procurement contracts have provided business to and supported over 50 producers of color, local farmers, and food producers.
History
For more than six years ARC has been working to address long-standing problems of economic inequality and public health, as well as rising threats of climate change on community health and well-being.
In 2016, ARC engaged The Democracy Collaborative to produce an assessment of the best opportunities for investment to achieve these goals in the East Bay. The assessment identified a business opportunity to increase local food production and distribution in the area. The findings revealed a number of opportunities to connect disinvested Richmond and East Oakland communities to broader patterns of regional economic prosperity by leveraging the purchasing power and assets of anchor institutions.
Supporting resilient communities, one meal at a time
In 2020, ARC facilitated the opening of a culinary center in Union City which produces thousands of sustainable, nutritious meals for daily distribution to institutions throughout Northern California while bringing hundreds of jobs to underserved communities and supporting small local food producers. By sourcing local and sustainable ingredients from arugula to zucchini, the food center is building resilience and increasing contracting opportunities for local farmers and food entrepreneurs of color.