Health Care Without Harm joins health care and climate leaders at White House

  • US & Canada

Health Care Without Harm has spent nearly three decades innovating, piloting, and implementing health care systems change efforts and partnerships in the health care sector to activate all of its assets – economic, political, moral, clinical, financial – in service of environmental health and justice.

In June, Health Care Without Harm joined senior executives from leading health systems, suppliers, HHS, the VA, and Biden’s National Climate Advisor for a White House event. The event celebrated the progress and dedication of 61 of the largest U.S. hospital and health sector organizations, each having recently signed HHS’ Health Care Sector Pledge, expressing their commitment to reducing their greenhouse gas emissions and increasing climate resilience. 

“Along with our organization’s commitment to this pledge, we are proud that our hospital partners strongly answered the administration’s call to join HHS’ Health Care Sector Pledge,”  said Health Care Without Harm founder Gary Cohen.

Of the more than 650 hospitals committed to the pledge, over 600 are already active in Health Care Without Harm’s affiliated network Practice Greenhealth. They join more than 200 federal hospitals and health facilities from the VA and the Military Health System (who are also members of Practice Greenhealth) committed to decarbonizing under the Executive Order mandating federal facilities reduce emissions

“Pledge signatories have $100 billion in annual purchasing power, proving health care can be a catalyst for broader systemic action on climate change and highlighting the importance of creating enough market momentum to transform the entire health care sector,” Cohen said. “It also demonstrates the importance of private sector leadership to effectively reduce the impacts of climate change. We need more support to take our mission to the next level because there’s still much more to be done and no time to waste.”