Placement: University of California, San Francisco
Mentor: Sapna Thottathil, Ph.D., M.Sc., Managing Director, Center for Climate, Health and Equity, University of California, San Francisco
Co-mentor: Jodi Sherman, M.D., Associate Professor of Anesthesiology and Epidemiology (Environmental Health Sciences), Affiliated Faculty, Yale Institute for Global Health; Medical Director of Sustainability, Center for Sustainable Health Care; Director, Program on Healthcare Environmental Sustainability, Yale Center on Climate Change and Health; Director of Sustainability, Anesthesiology, Affiliated Faculty, Climate Change and Health
Project: Reducing Carbon Emissions in Hospitals
Clémence Marty-Chastan, M.P.A., M.Sc., is a 2023–24 French Harkness Fellow in Health Care Policy and Practice. She currently serves as the head of strategy and transformation for the Assistance Publique–Hôpitaux de Paris (AP–HP), the Greater Paris Academic Hospital, and is a member of the board of directors. She leads a team of 80 people from multiple backgrounds, managing complex projects in digital health, innovation, and defining net zero carbon strategies for a group of 39 hospitals. Marty-Chastan began her career as a strategy consultant with Boston Consulting Group, and subsequently gained experience in public policy design through successive positions at the French Ministries of Culture, Finance, and Health. She held several strategic roles in health policy, including as part of the French task force on Health Care Financing (Ministry of Health) and with Inspection générale des affaires sociales (IGAS), the French government’s audit, evaluation, and inspection office for health and social security. Marty-Chastan earned a master’s degree in management from HEC Paris Business School and a master’s degree in public administration from École Nationale d’Administration.
Project Overview: With the health sector currently accounting for 8 percent of global carbon emissions, care providers are increasingly aware of the environmental impacts of their work and are making commitments to reduce emissions. Some countries have also set national targets for their health care sector. However, institutional commitments and individual actions to reduce the carbon footprint have yet to be translated into impact-driven strategies that can be implemented on a larger scale.
This research will investigate how to design such strategies and facilitate their implementation. More specifically, it will explore how health care providers can implement net-zero carbon strategies without affecting their main mission and objectives, such as quality and security of care, as well as cost control. The expected contribution is to accelerate the reduction of carbon emissions to mitigate future damages and contribute to a more resilient health care system.
The methodology will include state-of-the science review, as well as interviews and case studies focusing on the design of impact-driven strategies, identifying the main challenges providers may face when implementing these strategies, and understanding the key ingredients to successful implementation. This body of work will provide insights to design education programs for health care professionals on best practices to cut carbon emissions, and support providers in the development and implementation process. Policy levels, such as regulatory reforms, will also be identified, along with new themes of clinical research to further foster the transition to green health care.
