The mission of the Green Ribbon Commission Health Care Working Group (HCWG) is to help leading healthcare facilities in greater Boston reduce their emissions, make themselves and their communities more resilient to climate disruptions, and to advocate for the significant health benefits of carbon mitigation to patients and communities.
The Health Care Working Group provides information, technical support, and opportunities for policy engagement to Boston’s world class health care facilities. Working together, we seek to help these institutions reduce their contributions to the city’s greenhouse gas emissions, help health care facilities partner with the communities they serve to address facility and community climate vulnerabilities, and leverage their trusted and influential voice to advance climate policy and environmental justice.
The working group also seeks to measure progress in the industry through reporting and advocates for climate action on behalf of the industry at the city and state level.
Chair
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Dr. Anne Klibanski
President and CEO
Mass General Brigham
Current Initiatives
Reducing Health Care Climate Impacts
Metro Boston hospitals have made significant carbon mitigation and energy efficiency progress over the last decade. Recent analysis supported by the GRC HCWG shows they cut their greenhouse gas emissions by 18 percent from 2011 through 2019, despite serving more patients and expanding health care facility space by ten percent, thereby cutting costs, increasing productivity, and saving lives. The HCWG will build on this base and:
- Support members in renewable energy procurement, including offshore wind.
- Proactively engage Boston’s health care community to support the implementation of BERDO 2.0 with an emphasis on advancing health equity and community resilience.
- Support the development of strategies to decarbonize the city’s major steam plants that serve many of Boston’s major health care facilities.
Building Health Care Facility and Community Climate Resilience
- Within the GRC, convene an “Anchor Institution Cohort” of hospitals and other leading institutions in the Boston area to develop a community resilience project.
- Publish, promote, and socialize a community climate resilience report, and a hospital community resilience playbook based on a community climate resilience exercise.
Advancing Climate Policy
- Educate state legislators and regulators with health care subject matter expertise on policies, programs, and investment opportunities that support health care decarbonization.
Participating Organizations
Mass General Brigham, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, Boston Children’s Hospital, Boston Medical Center, MetroWest Medical Center, Brigham & Women’s Hospital, Bay State Health, Cambridge Health Alliance, North Shore Medical Center, Spaulding Hospital & Rehabilitation Network, Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Steward Health Care System, Heywood Hospital, Harrington Hospital, Cape Cod Health, Tufts Medical Center, UMass Memorial Medical Center