SWCOEH’s Dr. William "Brett" Perkison co-authors health care sustainability article published by NEJM
Houston (Feb. 28, 2022) – Dr. Brett Perkison, MD, MPH, of the Southwest Center for Occupational and Environmental Health (SWCOEH) at UTHealth School of Public Health co-authored an article published this month by the New England Journal of Medicine.
The article, “What Can Hospitals Learn from The Coca-Cola Company? Health Care Sustainability Reporting”, was published on Feb. 16 as an early release article in NEJM Catalyst Innovations in Care Delivery.
“Our article provides a detailed guide for how health care institutions can become more a part of the solution towards mitigating climate change,” Dr. Perkison said. “Climate change will continue to impact every aspect of human health.”
Article Summary: The climate crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic are revealing limits to the economic, environmental, and social resources and systems on which society depends. These dual crises are driving increased demand for transparent, equitable, and sustainable enterprise and, consequently, a significant change in business strategy and operations. Corporations of all kinds are undertaking a new form of accounting that not only captures financial performance, but also measures efforts to mitigate the destructive impacts that business operations have on the environment and society. Many corporations, such as The Coca-Cola Company, now publish regular reports using standardized frameworks to communicate progress in sustainability initiatives. The health care delivery system represents a substantial part of the U.S. economy and has numerous opportunities to both improve its sustainability effort and how it reports those efforts to the public.
The SWCOEH provides a variety of graduate-level training opportunities for occupational and environmental health professionals through our industrial hygiene, occupational and environmental medicine, occupational epidemiology, and Total Worker Health®. For more information, visit the SWCOEH website.
The Southwest Center for Occupational and Environmental Health is part of the UTHealth Houston School of Public Health