The Stephanie Davis Waste Reduction and Pollution Prevention Award and Scholarship is an enduring tribute to Stephanie C. Davis, who worked with Health Care Without Harm at its inception in 1996 and was a tireless champion of the movement toward sustainable health care by reducing waste and eliminating the use of harmful chemicals and materials in health care products and processes.
The four deserving recipients for 2019 represent a cross section of champions working everyday, as Davis did, to make health care more sustainable. Each received a scholarship to attend CleanMed, the premier conference for leaders in health care sustainability.
Jessica Dolan is a staff telemetry nurse at Wentworth-Douglass Hospital in Dover, N.H. She entered the nursing profession in 2014, devoted to preventing illness and promoting health. In 2016 she founded and continues to lead her hospital’s first sustainability team.
“I am genuinely excited to receive the Stephanie Davis Waste Reduction and Pollution Prevention Award and Scholarship and be among other passionate environmental stewards that strive every day to make sustainable practices a priority, to “first do no harm,” and to stand up for what they stand on,” Dolan said.
Kate Gottlieb is the sustainability program coordinator for Virginia Mason Memorial Hospital. Her education in public health drives her passion for environmental sustainability and environmental change to influence behavior change.
“Now that I am a mother, going to work every day has a new meaning.” Gottlieb said. “I am determined to help minimize our footprint for the next generation.”
Sarah Hsu is a first-year medical student at Brown University’s Warren Alpert Medical School, where she founded of the Environmental Coalition to address sustainability and waste reduction at the medical school. She is also leading the charge on an elective to incorporate climate change education into the medical school's curriculum.
“I feel incredibly grateful to receive this award and humbled by the opportunity to attend CleanMed this year,” Hsu said.
Daniel Mukonde is a Zambian national who’s been working in the health care waste management sector for a decade in the poorest communities of Lusaka, where there are no medical waste management services and inadequate waste disposal facilities. With others, he started a community project to manage medical waste in a more sustainable manner, which ultimately developed into a company called Waste Master to try and address the medical waste management needs of small, private sector health care facilities.
“It is so humbling to realize that the little effort we put into health care sustainability in our community can be so impactful to society,” Mukonde said.