UCLPartners launches new Climate Collaborative to galvanise sustainability efforts across the NHS
UCLPartners has announced it will work to reduce NHS carbon emissions by bringing industry, academia and healthcare professionals together, developing and identifying innovative solutions, supporting their implementation, and measuring their impact.
The UCLPartners Climate Collaborative will accelerate local work to deliver the NHS Green Plan, in North Central and North East London and Mid and South Essex to reduce healthcare carbon emissions and tackle the climate emergency.
The NHS Green Plan set out ambitious targets to meet net zero, improve air quality and minimise single use plastics. On 1 July 2022, the NHS became the first health system to embed net zero into legislation. Despite great progress being made, our partners are looking for support from industry and academia to increase the scale and pace of action.
The NHS in England is responsible for 4-5% of our country’s carbon emissions and is a significant polluter and user of natural resources. This contributes to both climate change and air pollution, which are huge threat to health. A report by Imperial College London found that in London alone, poor air quality led to more than 1,700 hospital admissions for asthma and serious lung conditions between 2017-2019.
By being one of our country’s major polluters, the NHS is well placed to deliver impact – adopting innovative solutions to drive down our carbon emissions and improve our nation’s health.
The UCLPartners collaborative will disseminate learning and best practice from academia; it will work with industry and academia to develop new innovative solutions to the net zero challenges our health partners are facing and it will enable implementation at scale of existing innovative solutions.
Dr Dominique Allwood, Chief Medical Officer at UCLPartners said: “We know what the problem is and that we need to do something about it, but in order to turn rhetoric into reality we must now focus more on how we make a difference, and quickly. We need to collaborate across NHS, academia and industry to rapidly identify and scale up existing solutions and to develop and test new solutions”
At the recent NHS Sustainability Summit in London, Dr Allwood outlined UCLPartners ambitions to bring together academics, industry and NHS partners in targeted net zero challenge areas to identify and implement novel ways to tackle carbon emissions caused by the NHS.
Dr Allwood, added: “Our vision is that by working together we can reduce our impact on the environment and deliver sustainable healthcare. This will put us on a path to a cleaner, greener, healthier and more equitable future for generations to come.”
If you would like to join the UCLPartners Collaborative or get more information on how it will work, please contact us .