By SUSAN JONES
For Noe Woods, the moment of clarity about waste in the health sciences came in the operating room.
“What inspired me was all the trash that I made,” said Woods, an assistant professor in the School of Medicine’s Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences. “When you’re a surgeon, after you do a very simple procedure, you have a pile of trash — sometimes waist height, sometimes chest height. I started asking questions about where does my trash go? Why do I have this much trash?”
For Mike Boninger, working on environmental issues had always been a goal. When he was serving as chair of the Department of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation in the School of Medicine, he started thinking, “If I could pick any job I wanted, what would it be? And I decided it would be working on saving the planet. So I spent the nine years I was a department chair just reading and learning everything I could.”
Eventually their missions coincided when Boninger told his bosses at UPMC that he wanted another job more rooted in the environment and Woods helped lead a group of physicians, Clinicians for Climate Action, to write a letter to UPMC saying, “we’re worried about the planet and here are a few things that we think UPMC can do to make things better,” Boninger said.
That letter led to the creation of the UPMC Center for Sustainability and around the same time, Boninger became associate dean for sustainability for the School of Medicine and chief medical sustainability officer at UPMC.
Now Boninger and Woods will head up the newly created Office of Sustainability in the Health Sciences as associate dean and assistant dean for sustainability, respectively. The new office was announced at an event April 22 — Earth Day — at Scaife Hall. It will oversee sustainability efforts in all six schools of the health sciences.
“This is an initiative that I think has been long overdue,” said Anantha Shekhar, senior vice chancellor for health sciences. “I think as overall health sciences and health care providers, we have been a little slow in embracing this initiative.”
Shekhar noted that “health care organizations, hospitals and health care providers are a significant contributor to both carbon emissions but also plastics and other pollutants that are choking our planet.”
Health care and associated research are responsible for approximately eight to 10 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions and represent the second-largest industry contributing to landfill waste worldwide.
“If we can reduce that even by half, that is a significant contribution to the planet,” Shekhar said. “Of course, we have a long way to go and a huge challenge to make us carbon neutral, particularly as a planet. But we have to start here. We have to start at home. We have to start in our individual offices and individual clinics.”
Boninger said the office has three main goals:
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Decrease the carbon footprints of the operations of the health sciences. “Teaching is probably a relatively smaller carbon footprint, but our research endeavors and the wonderful work that we do here at Pitt all have a carbon footprint that we need to work on reducing,” he said.
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Add to the research on how to make people well in a way that is sustainable.
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Train the next generation of clinicians how to care for patients “that are in this world that we’re creating, this new order, and also how to do that in a more sustainable way.”
The Office of Sustainability in the Health Sciences will work in partnership with the UPMC Center for Sustainability, which has signed the White House pledge to reduce UPMC carbon emissions by 50 percent by 2030 and be carbon neutral by 2050. The two offices will share space in the Medical Arts Building on Fifth Avenue across from the new hospital UPMC is building.
By joining together, Boninger said they will be able to “explore the educational aspects while trying to change clinical practice across 40 hospitals and hundreds of outpatient locations.” The UPMC and Pitt offices also have been asked by the National Academy of Medicine to join its Climate Collaborative to explore how to decarbonize the U.S. health care sector. Boninger and Woods were to travel to Washington, D.C., this week to kick off that effort.
In addition, five schools of the health sciences now have separate sustainability directors. Woods will head up the School of Medicine office. For now, Dean Christine Kasper is attending the Office of Sustainability in the Health Sciences meetings for the School of Nursing.
School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences: Michelle Varnell, assistant professor in the Athletic Training program
School of Dental Medicine: Claire Werner, assistant professor in the Department of Oral and Craniofacial Sciences
School of Pharmacy: Karen Pater, associate professor
School of Public Health: Suresh Kuchipudi, professor and chair in Department of Infectious Diseases and Microbiology
The health sciences sustainability office also will partner with the University-wide Office of Sustainability. Aurora Sharrard, assistant vice chancellor for sustainability, announced at the April 22 event that solar panels will be installed on Scaife Hall next year and will be on two other health science buildings currently under construction.
In coordination with the Office of Sustainability in the Health Sciences, the School of Public Health will be part of the Pennsylvania One Health consortium, serving as the coordinating academic institution of a group that includes Penn State and the University of Pennsylvania.
One Health is a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention effort that collaborates with state agencies and community leaders to address One Health initiatives through a transdisciplinary portfolio of research, education and community outreach.
The school will lead the research component, and there will be a certificate in climate and health care sustainability across all of the health sciences and across all the academic institutions involved in the consortium.
Maureen Lichtveld, dean of the School of Public Health, said when she was asked in an interview what keeps her up at night, she replied that there are four things: “One, the climate is heating; two, air and water quality; food security and food safety; and the last one, and the most important one in my books, are infectious diseases. They’re coming closer to us because the health of the environment is inextricably linked to that of people.”
Susan Jones is editor of the University Times. Reach her at suejones@pitt.edu or 724-244-4042.
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