1st Edition
Environmentally Sustainable Primary Care Good for the planet, good for practices, good for patients
This practical guide for primary care provides a context-specific introduction to the sustainability challenges associated with good health-care delivery and provides easy-to-implement yet impactful actions that can be taken to reduce and mitigate the impact of primary care on the living world while also looking at the impact of the changing planet on health care that people will encounter.
The chapters address the following key questions: What is the issue? What can I do/what can my practice do? How do my actions help patients, practice, and planet? Included throughout are case studies, vignettes, and anecdotes of previous successful interventions, while a checklist of the most impactful actions for others to follow, as supported by the current evidence base, provides a convenient summary. References and additional resource recommendations give directions for further guidance. The book looks at the four pillars of primary care – dentistry, General Practice, optometry, and pharmacy – and includes international contributions.
Providing invaluable direction to turn good intentions into meaningful action, this book will be invaluable to health professionals and practice managers across all primary care disciplines and to students preparing to enter practice in those fields. It will also be of interest to integrated care system administrators and to health policymakers.
List of contributors
Foreword by Rachel Stancliffe
Foreword by Richard Smith
Introduction
1 Primary care and planetary health
TAMSIN ELLIS AND MATT SAWYER
2 Dentistry
CIARA O’KANE AND DAVINDER RAJU
3 General Practice
VEENA AGGARWAL, ILONA HALE, HANNAH O’HARA, SEAN OWENS, JAMES MORTON, JUDITH PINNICK, MUNRO STEWART, SARAH WILLIAMS, AND RICHARD YIN
4 Optometrists and opticians
ANTONIA CHITTY AND ABI PAGE
5 Pharmacy
MIN NA EII, CLARE MURRAY, AND WENDY TYLER-BATT
6 Planetary health in a GP surgery
MIKE TOMSON
7 Achieving appropriate investigation, prescribing, and treatment
TONY AVERY, TESSA LEWIS, AND NEAL MASKREY
8 Lifestyle medicine
LYDIA VOGELAAR-KELLY AND MATT SAWYER
9 Sustainable quality improvement
ALICE CLACK AND FRANCES MORTIMER
10 Estates and energy
BEN HOLT AND MATT SAWYER
11 Travel and transport
MATT SAWYER
12 Procurement of goods and services
MATT SAWYER
13 Air
SINEAD MILLWOOD AND MALCOLM WHITE
14 Water
RICHARD HIXSON, GEORGIE SOWMAN, AND SHARON PFLEGER
15 Land
ANGELA WILSON
16 Finance
SPENCER CASEY AND DENISE SMITH
17 Behaviour change
MANDA BROOKMAN AND DENISE SMITH
18 Working across organisations
HELEN KINGSTON AND EMMA RADCLIFFE
19 Managing eco-distress
BECKI SMITH-TAYLOR
20 Turning intentions into action
MATT SAWYER AND MIKE TOMSON
Appendix A: List of abbreviations
Appendix B: Glossary
Appendix C: Useful organisations
Appendix D: Further reading and resources
Index
Biography
Dr Matt Sawyer is a former GP, current Director of SEE Sustainability and a Carbon Literacy trainer, UK
Dr Mike Tomson is a former GP (clinically retired), a medical educator coach and a Trustee for Centre for Sustainable Healthcare, previously Director of Greener Practice CIC, UK.
