Zoutman: Climate change risks are universal. Climate change poses major threats to human health and everyone is at risk, Dr. Dick Zoutman told an audience at Belleville General Hospital. Dr. Zoutman is Quinte Health Care’s chief of staff, an emeritus professor of Queen’s University, a medical microbiologist and infectious diseases expert, and was the guest speaker at the Belleville General Hospital Foundation’s lecture series. “The health impacts are significant... and they affect all of us. We could see drought; we could see storms. In the Quinte region, we have seen Lyme disease, which we haven’t seen before," he said in an interview. Read more. 

To improve patient diets, the doctor is in … the kitchen. More and more primary care doctors are using the kitchen as the place to prescribe a powerful medicine: healthy food. With poor diets linked to many deaths from preventable diseases, research has found that changing diet and becoming more active can be more effective than medication in preventing disease. Read more. 

Creating Healthy Retail Food Environments in Health Care Facilities. Hospital workers experience an 8.6% higher burden of illnesses such as diabetes, congestive heart failure, hypertension, and obesity than the general U.S. workforce. Although patient meals are carefully calibrated for their nutritional profile and tailored for specific diets, food and beverages sold in hospital retail settings are often out of line with dietary recommendations. Click here to read Healthcare Without Harm's document Creating Healthy Retail Food Environments in Health Care Facilities

How to Divest a Health Institution. Hospitals with endowment funds have the ability to impact climate change through their investments. This document from Britain's MEDACT (similar to Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) in the US) is a tool for helping health institutions divest from fossil fuels and make climate-smart investment choices.
The report acknowledges the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) for being one institution that has already divested! Download your copy here.

Infrastructure and Buildings Working Group: Adaptation State of Play Report. The Infrastructure and Buildings Adaptation “State of Play” project provides an overview of state of adaptation in Canada and the activities underway in the infrastructure and building sectors. The project has drawn on input from a variety of key infrastructure and adaptation experts in Canada, literature reviews, includes input from the IBWG. In this 2017 report, various gaps and opportunities have been identified as well as potential options for addressing them. Read the report.

Boston Hospitals Lead Nation in Greenhouse Gas Reductions. A recent Health Care Without Harm report  highlights how Boston-area hospitals cut their greenhouse gas emissions by 29 percent between 2011 and 2015. They’ve already surpassed climate goals established by the city and Massachusetts, which aimed for a 25 percent greenhouse gas reduction by 2020. Even better: Boston health care facilities are on track to reduce emissions by a remarkable 47 percent by 2020 as compared to business-as-usual energy growth. That’s equivalent to eliminating the annual greenhouse gas emissions of 42,220 passenger vehicles. Read more. 

Indoor Environment Quality and You. Keeping people healthy, happy, and productive at work is critical for any organization; probably none more so than a hospital. But making an indoor environment healthy for human occupants is not as simple as it seems. A recent study called  “The Impact of Green Buildings on Cognitive Function” was a partnership between Harvard, Syracuse University Center of Excellence, and the SUNY Upstate Medical School. They tested participants in a green building environment and in a conventional working environment by modifying the VOC levels and CO2 levels over the period of six days. They found that people working in green building environments performed 61% to 101% better in cognitive function tests, and identify productivity increases of 10% or 15% and reductions of absenteeism of 35%. Read more.

Retrofitting your building makes plain business cents. Retrofitting buildings makes economic sense, and not just because of lower operating costs: green buildings can fetch higher rents and retain occupants longer. Moreover, as the cost of carbon increases, more sustainable buildings will have a clear advantage in terms of reduced GHG emissions. A study of Bentall Kennedy’s North American real estate portfolio of more than 300 buildings found that environmentally friendly office properties commanded nearly 4 percent higher rent. Read more. 

The BPS reporting portal is open for the 2017 reporting period under O. Reg. 397/11. Public Sector organizations are required report on their 2015 energy consumption by July 1, 2017.  Information on how to complete the annual energy and GHG report, along with the dates and times for Ministry-hosted webinars, can be found in the toolkit area by logging into the Ministry of Energy’s Portal. Contact BPSsupport@ontario.ca if your require further information.