Carbon footprint modelling of national health systems: Opportunities, challenges and recommendations

Amy Booth

International Journal of Health Planning and Management, 2022, vol. 37, issue 4, 1885-1893

Abstract: Health care presents significant contributions towards climate change. An awareness of a health systems carbon footprint provides a quantification of its environmental impact, an understanding of carbon intensive areas to target with reduction measures and a means of mapping trends in emissions over time. Attempts at calculating the carbon footprint of national health systems are few, predominantly of developed nations, and are limited by data availability and methodological inadequacies. There is a need to mobilise countries to understand the role of health care in contributing towards climate change and for them to start engaging in ongoing calculations of their national health system carbon footprints. There is also a need to improve data availability and information systems to allow for such calculations, especially in developing countries where there may be differences in carbon hotspots. Finally, there is a need for continued improvements in the carbon footprint modelling methodology of health systems as data collection and available emission factors, especially of health care specific products and supply chain emissions, improves. Health systems need to join the global fight against climate change.

Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1002/hpm.3447

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:ijhplm:v:37:y:2022:i:4:p:1885-1893

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0749-6753

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Health Planning and Management is currently edited by Calum Paton

More articles in International Journal of Health Planning and Management from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().