Carbon footprint modelling of national health systems: Opportunities, challenges and recommendations

Abstract

Health care presents significant contributions towards climate change. An awareness of a health systems carbon footprint provides a quantification of its environmental impact, an understanding of carbon intensive areas to target with reduction measures and a means of mapping trends in emissions over time. Attempts at calculating the carbon footprint of national health systems are few, predominantly of developed nations, and are limited by data availability and methodological inadequacies. There is a need to mobilise countries to understand the role of health care in contributing towards climate change and for them to start engaging in ongoing calculations of their national health system carbon footprints. There is also a need to improve data availability and information systems to allow for such calculations, especially in developing countries where there may be differences in carbon hotspots. Finally, there is a need for continued improvements in the carbon footprint modelling methodology of health systems as data collection and available emission factors, especially of health care specific products and supply chain emissions, improves. Health systems need to join the global fight against climate change.

Keywords: carbon footprint; climate change; health systems.

FIGURE 1

National Health System Carbon Footprints. (Source: Adapted from Pichler et.al., Tennison et.al, Wu, Malik et.al., Eckelman et.al., Nansai et.al.)