Dr. Dean Chittock, Vice President of Medicine, Quality & Safety (left) and Dr. Chad Kim Sing, Associate Vice President of Medicine, Quality & Safety (right)
As medical staff, we make decisions every day that affect the health of those we care for. And those choices affect not only the people around us, but the world we live in.
In this Spring 2022 Medical Staff Newsletter we celebrate and recognize Vancouver Coastal Health's commitment to planetary health. As an organization, individuals, and health care providers, we have an opportunity and obligation to be accountable and responsible for building not only healthy persons, but healthy environments. This goes far beyond 'reduce, reuse, recycle' to a commitment around questioning and changing our approaches to delivering health care.
VCH has made planetary health a strategic priority, not because it's a popular movement but because it's the right and ethical choice for our organization and those in our communities.
Our work as medical professionals is constantly informed through learning and questioning. Our approach to planetary health should be no different. We encourage you to embed the question of 'how can we do the best we can?' to reduce the environmental impacts of our work and carbon footprint. Ask ourselves, 'are there better ways of doing business?' 'Can we do things in a different way?' These are questions we should be asking before each act of consumption, purchase and action as we provide service. Many of our colleagues are already asking these questions, and we've featured a number of their initiatives in this edition of the newsletter.
Many of you may not realize the power you have in your decisions: influencing purchasing choices, supplies, food services, contracts, diagnostics, and treatments. You hold considerable sway, both within our organization and within the larger health care community.
As medical leadership, we commit as well: to educate, remove barriers, and integrate a thought process around planetary health into all of our activities. We ask the same of you.
In the last year alone, our health authority has helped those dealing with floods, wildfires and an extreme heat dome, all while still in the midst of a pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic has lifted a veil on inequities across our society, many of which are exacerbated or driven by climate change, such as food insecurity across our own nation.
There are already projects underway to support planetary health across VCH, and we encourage you to share your ideas with each other and with us. Reach out to medicalstafffeedback@vch.ca. We'll continue to share opportunities for learning and participating in new projects through this newsletter, on the medical staff website, and through the medical staff forums. We hope you'll join us in our commitment to planetary health and making positive changes together.
