Canadian Coalition for Green Health Care

The Canadian Coalition for Green Health Care is a not-for-profit network that aims to promote sustainability and climate resilience in Canada’s health system. Our Mission is to build capabilities and capacity in individuals and organizations to enable the development of green health policies and practices. We do this strategically by identifying and working with health system change-makers, measuring impact, and building networks of influence. Our flagship initiatives include the Health Care Facility Climate Change Resiliency Toolkit, which was developed in partnership with Health Canada, and the Green Hospital Scorecard, a benchmarking tool that helps hospitals track their environmental sustainability initiatives and climate resilience efforts. Additionally, the coalition provides education and awareness tools such as the GHG and H2O Green Facility Toolkit and offers training and webinars to help healthcare professionals reduce emissions at their sites by creating their own programmes. We contributed to CAPE’s Climate Change Toolkit for Health Professionals with the chapter entitled Taking Action on Climate Change at Health Care Facilities. Our staff is also involved in national initiatives, such as the development of Canada’s National Adaptation Strategy.

Supporting the following commitments:

• Conduct climate change and health vulnerability and adaptation assessments (V&As) at population level and/or health care facility level.
• Develop a health national adaptation plan (HNAP) informed by the health V&A, which forms part of the National Adaptation Plan.
• Use the V&A and HNAP to facilitate access to climate change funding for health.
• Set a target date by which to achieve health systems net zero emissions (ideally by 2050).
• Deliver a baseline assessment of greenhouse gas emissions of the health system (including supply chains).
• Develop an action plan or roadmap by a set date to develop a sustainable low carbon health system (including supply chains).

Country experience:

Canada (training and workshops)