Adopting a planetary health lens provides a new way to think about environmental sustainability in primary care. With many providers working together to incorporate the 4 principles of sustainable health care into our everyday work, we can help reduce the health sector’s environmental footprint with additional benefits for patients, providers, and the health care system.
This webinar features Ilona Hale, MD, exploring new ideas in environmentally sustainable clinical practice. It goes beyond basic measures like recycling and energy-efficient lighting, highlighting the connection between environmental sustainability and high-quality care, including patient-centred care, de-prescribing, and health promotion. The session explains how practicing high-quality, low-carbon care can improve patient outcomes, reduce healthcare system burden, decrease provider workload, and help address climate change. Ilona Hale is a family physician with the East Kootenay Division of Family Practice and an Assistant Clinical Professor in the Department of Family Practice at the University of British Columbia.
This playbook offers practical guidance and considerations for integrating social and nature prescribing into healthcare practices, fostering community partnerships, promoting high-impact programs, and better understanding the potential for environmental co-benefits of these programs. It is intended for health care providers, program administrators, link workers, researchers, educators, and anyone else interested in better understanding the environmental co-benefits of social and nature prescribing. Developed in collaboration with the Canadian Institute for Social Prescribing (CISP), a national hub anchored by the Canadian Red Cross, this playbook builds on a literature review and expert guidance to connect healthcare, social services, and community supports for improved health and well-being. The playbook aims to: Provide background information, resources, and considerations for guiding social and nature prescribing practices. Highlight how nature prescribing, as a variation of social prescribing, can generate significant environmental co-benefits.
In this session of the Sustainable Primary & Community Care Implementation Series, we will hear from a multi-disciplinary team who are putting social prescribing concepts into practice, learn more about building community engagement and resilience, and co-creating programs: Gary Bloch, Family Physician and Physician Lead, Equity and Social Interventions, St. Michael’s Hospital Academic Family Health Team Nassim Vahidi-Williams, Manager, Community and Patient Engagement, SMHAFHT Sandesh Basnet, SEED Program Link Worker, SMHAFHT Janet Rodriguez, Lived Experience Expert Advisor, SMHAFHT
