Thank you for being a part of CSH in 2023!
May you find beauty in the midst of midwinter
As we prepare for 2024, it is time to reflect on the last year and look ahead to new prospects.
We are thrilled that our team has increased in size and strength this year, allowing us to address the growing demand in sustainable healthcare. The number of courses, networks, and Green Team competitions has increased significantly, and many more organisations are seeking us to collaborate in delivering change through training, consulting, or research.
We will extend our activities in the UK next year, but we will also strive to cooperate with others on an international scale to enhance the effect of our work in the future years. There are many wonderful things taking place, but we must never lose sight of the fact that we are in an emergency and that every day matters. Over the last 15 years, CSH has collaborated with partners to create many resources and we want to ensure that this knowledge is disseminated as far as possible.
We would like to thank all of the people and organisations that help us make a difference via a variety of projects: our Trustees, Associates, and volunteers, our Fellows and Scholars, colleagues in other organisations, and our funders. We look forward to working with many of you in 2024!
Some highlights from 2023
Sustainability in Quality Improvement (SusQI)
2023 has been another exciting year for the SusQI programme. The first 6 months of the year focused on the funding and support we received from the Small Business Research Institute (SBRI). Working with Glasshouse Health marketing team, and the Health Innovation teams of Oxford and Kent, Surrey and Sussex, the project helped us create a marketing plan and a Public and Patient Involvement and Engagement (PPIE) strategy. Our public representatives recruited through this process Georgina and Andrea will be integral to how we implement this strategy into 2024. The support from SBRI and our partners was fantastic, and as result the SusQI team at CSH was shortlisted for the 2023 Innovate Award, Net Zero Innovation category, In recognition of SusQI's potential to significantly and positively impact the NHS's ambition to reach Net Zero by 2040.
- Our team has expanded welcoming Syed Hussian who joined the team in April 2023 as our Clinical Transformation Programme Officer, and we welcomed Ayoma Ratnappuli as our SusQI Education Fellow in September 2023.
- Through 2023 our SusQI Academy and Beacon site programmes have seen a growing number and range of organisations from across the UK involved, and our first international members in Australia and Canada! The fantastic SusQI Showcase held in May 2023, showcased great examples of SusQI in practice from our members and partners.
- We’ve trained 200+ individuals through our Sustainability in Quality Improvement workshops and bespoke courses and sessions including those with the Nuffield Trust, Florence Nightingale Foundation and Royal College of Nurses, and had the privilege to be a part of the Net Zero Clinical Care Conference 2023, hosted by the BMJ and UKHACC, and the Our People Our Planet 2023 event.
For some seasonal inspiration from our members and collaborators see the 12 days of Christmas – SusQI addition below! And find more information about our SusQI programmes and access to our open access resources on susqi.org.
Green Team Competition
- CSH have collaborated with 5 NHS Trusts and an Integrated Care Board (ICB) in England this year to deliver 6 Green Team Competitions. So far, the outcomes of 3 of them are known with combined savings of £790,000 and 287 tonnes CO2e. We are looking forward for the results of the other teams!
- 35 participating teams from a range of specialties and professional groups have developed case studies to share and spread their impacts and learning. 17 of these case studies are available now via our Resource Library. Stay tuned for the remainder early next year.
We are excited to host new competitions in 2024, including our very first international competition! We still have a few spaces left to organise a Green Team Competition with your organisation. The Green Team Competition offers both bigger picture understanding and guides practical changes in sustainable healthcare – transforming knowledge into action. If you are interested, please contact Hazel Walsh, Clinical Transformation Programme Manager for further information or to schedule a Teams call.
Carbon Footprinting
2023 was a busy year for the carbon modelling team. CSH’s sustainability analysts provided crucial carbon modelling support for various CSH projects including:
- formed 15 scholars through our Sustainable Scholars programme
- supported 6 Green Team Competitions
- ran 10 Carbon Footprinting Courses, reaching 245 participants from across the globe
- provided insight for CSH’s SBRI Phase 1 project
- offered carbon literacy workshops and external consultancy projects
We enjoyed continuing our collaboration with Ufonia, evaluating the environmental impact of using AI for pre and post cataract surgery, as well as a new collaboration with HammondCare to estimate the carbon impact of their digital app offering carer to support for dementia patients. We also supported Gloucestershire ICB, Gloucestershire primary care (GP) and Gloucestershire Health and Care NHS Foundation Trust to estimate their 22/23 baseline carbon footprint.
Finally, this year CSH conducted its first ever carbon footprint analysis which we hope to publish very soon!
Education and Training
In 2023, CSH continued to develop and expand its range of educational initiatives, in support of its strategic objective to provide healthcare staff with the awareness, skills, confidence and motivation to integrate sustainability into clinical culture and healthcare provision.
CSH created two new specialty courses: Sustainable Child Health and Sustainable Procurement. The latter is aimed at non-clinical procurement specialists working in healthcare and provides the opportunity for participants to discuss challenges, opportunities, and plan tangible steps to measure and mitigate the environmental impact across the whole procurement chain.
There were 1,023 attendees on our courses in 2023, with participants booked onto our courses from 21 different countries. Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive with over 95% saying they would recommend Foundation courses to colleagues.
Launched in 2022 as ‘board-level training’, our Net Zero Leadership training programme expanded rapidly in 2023 with 15 bespoke programmes delivered to leadership groups, including ICBs and Trust boards, across England and Wales.
The CSH Education programme is supported by a number of committed volunteers. Some have volunteered alongside a regular job, others intensively during the university holiday months, and some in their retirement. Some of the projects and profiles of recent volunteers can be found here. In 2023, 96 individuals volunteered 4,714 hours of work to CSH, equivalent to 2.4 full-time employees.
Green Space for Health
We are delighted to have received funding to more than double our tree planting on the NHS Forest to date. Thanks to Defra and the Forestry Commission, we will be planting 150,000 trees on NHS land over the next two years. This is alongside our strategic tree planting work, funded by the Trees Call to Action Fund, which aims to map trees and woodlands across the NHS estate, provide ecological advice, and increase the evidence base for the value of trees and woodlands to healthcare settings.
This year, our annual NHS Forest conference focused on the benefits of trees and woodlands, demonstrating how they are a valuable healthcare asset that should not be taken for granted. We have also been working in partnership with American Forests and the Woodland Trust on the Tree Equity Score which was launched in December.
We welcomed several new team members to the green spaces team this year: Hattie White and Neil Ingram who are working on the NHS Forest Defra funded project; Una Devlin and Daniel Loveard as our Green Spaces comms lead and project lead; and Sarah Jordan as our new Green Space for Health Director. We are delighted to have secured funding to extend our two Nature Recovery Ranger posts at Mount Vernon and Liverpool. At Mount Vernon Billy Styles has led a popular programme of activities throughout the year whilst the work of the Liverpool Nature Recovery Ranger, Nick White, together with the Friends of Bluebell Wood was recognised at the Liverpool University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (LUHFT) inaugural Sustainability Awards.
Networks Hub
Since the new Networks Platform launched in April this year, we have seen some fantastic growth in our community. The Networks Platform has almost doubled in 2023, with a community of +6200 members worldwide!
- We have 1976 topics, 834 resources, including case studies, and 161 events across the platform
- 73k of our users have come from the UK this year, 2.8k from the US, and 2.2k from Australia
- We have had 89k platform views since April and our resource library page has had more than 10k views
We plan to step things up next year, with more events, transferable case studies, new partnerships, and engaging content, there is so much to share, celebrate, strengthen, and learn from! Don’t forget that to actively like, post, chat, or collaborate with your fellow sustainable healthcare community, you need to log in.
“CSH networks enabled me to link up with colleagues from different disciplines and NHS Trusts working on a sustainability project that had already been implemented in my Trust. By sharing information on my Trust's project, I was able to help them move forward with theirs and convince their Trust's infection control team that the project was possible”. – Emily Parker, Sustainability Fellow in Paediatric Medicine.
We are excited to continue growing the CSH Networks Platform in 2024 and hope that you will join us in making our community of healthcare professionals and sustainability advocates the number one place to go for the latest conversations, collaboration, research, and events in sustainable healthcare worldwide. If you’d like to make a suggestion or you are interested in signing up as a network co-lead, please get in touch at info@sustainablehealthcare.org.uk.