Health Care's Carbon Footprint: Exploring the Health Care Sector’s Impact on Climate Change – 2024 Interim Meeting Ethics Forum

Health Care's Carbon Footprint: Exploring the Health Care Sector’s Impact on Climate Change – 2024 Interim Meeting Ethics Forum

Presented by the Committee on Ethics, Grievances, and Professional Standards, the Ethics Forum alerts physicians to the ethical implications of issues that arise in daily practice and offers information on issues at the intersection of ethics, medicine, and professionalism. The Ethics Forum at the Society’s Interim Meeting will consider the health care system’s impact on climate change.

Moderator
Renu S. Goyal, MD, FHM
Reliant Medical Group Hospitalists at Saint Vincent Hospital
Assistant Professor, University of Massachusetts Medical School
Chair, MMS Committee on Ethics, Grievances and Professional Standards 
Champion Lead Volunteer, One World Surgery Medical Missions in Primary Care
Past Chair, Department of Hospital Medicine, Reliant Medical Group

Dr. Renu Goyal is a hospital-based internist with Reliant Medical Group. She practices at Worcester Medical Center and St. Vincent Hospital. She is an assistant professor at UMass Chan Medical School. She completed her education and training at Karnatak University, India. Dr. Goyal serves as chair of the Massachusetts Medical Society’s Committee on Ethics, Grievances, and Professional Standards.

Faculty
Wynne Armand, MD
Associate Director, Massachusetts General Hospital Center for the Environment and Health
Co-Director, Primary Care Office InSite, Mass General Brigham
Assistant Professor, Harvard Medical School
Primary Care Physician, Massachusetts General Hospital Chelsea HealthCare Center
Distinguished Physician, Division of General Internal Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital

Wynne Armand, MD, practices primary care at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Chelsea HealthCare Center, where she provides comprehensive preventive care, chronic disease management and urgent care to adult patients in a diverse, urban setting. She is a Distinguished Physician in the Division of General Internal Medicine at MGH, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, and contributing editor at Harvard Health Publications. Dr. Armand co-directs Primary Care Office Insite (PCOI), a resource hub that supports high-quality, evidence-based delivery of primary care across Mass General Brigham through knowledge-sharing, multi-disciplinary collaboration, and integration of local information. Dr. Armand is an associate director at the Mass General Center for the Environment and Health, whose mission is to integrate sustainability into hospital operations, education, and research, and to advocate for policies that support a healthy environment for everyone. She received her medical degree from University of California San Francisco (UCSF), completed her internal medicine residency at UCSF in a primary care program based at San Francisco General Hospital, and is board certified in Internal Medicine.

Andrew Hantel, MD
Faculty, Divisions of Leukemia and Population Sciences, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Harvard Medical School Center for Bioethics
Assistant Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School

Andrew Hantel, MD, is a faculty member in the Divisions of Leukemia and Population Sciences at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Harvard Medical School Center for Bioethics, and he is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School (HMS). He received his MD from Loyola University Chicago; trained in internal medicine, adult hematology/oncology, and medical ethics at the University of Chicago and in population sciences at the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center. Dr. Hantel’s clinical care focuses on patients with leukemia and related blood cancers; he also serves as a hospital ethics consultant. His research program leverages health services and care delivery methods to address ethical dilemmas in cancer discovery and delivery, for which he receives research funding from the National Institutes of Health, American Society for Clinical Oncology, American Cancer Society, and Greenwall Foundation. Dr. Hantel’s current work focuses on cancer health equity in the contexts of research participation, artificial intelligence, and climate change.

Rachel Oblath, PhD
Assistant Professor, Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine
Director of Research Methodology, Boston Medical Center Department of Psychiatry

Rachel Oblath, PhD, is an Assistant Professor at the Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine and the Director of Research Methodology in the Department of Psychiatry at Boston Medical Center. Her research focuses on the provision of psychiatric emergency services in vulnerable communities. She also focuses on using electronic health records to examine the association between climate change and mental health. In addition, she has ongoing collaborations with Boston Police Department, Boston Emergency Medical Services, and the Boston Municipal Court System focused on increasing access to psychiatric services and decriminalizing mental health.

Intended Audience
This activity is designed for health care leaders, physicians, residents, other health care professionals and students in all health care professions.

Course Objectives
Upon completion of this activity, learners should be able to:

• Analyze how the U.S. health care system contributes to climate change, highlighting specific practices and policies that affect environmental sustainability
• Examine and describe the advantages and challenges associated with lowering the carbon footprint of the health care system
• Explore and consider actionable strategies for implementing sustainable practices in health care settings, focusing on actions for both the health care sector and government entities

Accreditation & Credit Information
Accreditation Statement  
The Massachusetts Medical Society is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) to provide continuing medical education for physicians.

AMA Credit Designation Statement 
The Massachusetts Medical Society designates this enduring material for a maximum of 1.00 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.

This activity meets the criteria for the Massachusetts Board of Registration in Medicine for risk management study.

National Commission on Certification of Physicians Assistant (NCCPA)
Physician Assistants may claim a maximum of 1.00 Category 1 credit for completing this activity. NCCPA accepts AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™ from organizations accredited by ACCME or a recognized state medical society.

Exam/Assessment: A score of 70% or higher is required to receive AMA PRA Category 1 Credit(s)™.  

Course Fees
Massachusetts Medical Society (MMS) Physician Member: $40.00
MMS Resident/Student Member: FREE
Non-Member Physician: $90.00
Non-Members Resident/Student: $20.00
Allied Health Professional/Other: $32.00

Activity Term
Original Release Date: December 20, 2024
Review Date(s): N/A  
Termination Date: December 20, 2027

Format and Estimated Time to Complete: Video/1 hour

System Requirements
Desktops/Laptops
Windows 10
Mac OSX 10.6 higher 

Most modern browsers including
IE 11+
Firefox 18.0+
Chrome latest version
Safari 12+

Mobile/Tablet
iOS devices beginning with OS version 10 or higher (includes, iPhone, ipad and iTouch devices)

Policies
Copyright Policy
Privacy Policy

Contact Us
Contact us at nejmcust@mms.org  or (800) 843-6356. Massachusetts Medical Society, 860 Winter Street, Waltham, MA 02451.