Desmond Leddin brings a wealth of expertise as a volunteer advisor on virtual conferences and sustainable transportation. A professor of Medicine at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Desmond’s leadership extends globally—he serves as Co-Chair of the Canadian Association of Gastroenterology Climate Committee and recently stepped into the role of Chair for the Climate Committee at the World Gastroenterology Organisation (WGO). His dedication to merging health care with climate action makes him a pivotal figure in driving environmental sustainability within the medical field.
Read below to learn more about how sustainability in health care, as highlighted by Desmond, is driven by ethical responsibility of doctors to minimize harm, professional duties to lead by example, and the need to address environmental impacts for future generations. Discover the importance of engaging health care providers to drive systemic change, including adopting sustainable transportation and promoting virtual conferences to reduce carbon footprints, while tackling barriers like financial drivers and awareness gaps.
Read full blog below.
Q1: What inspires you to be involved in making health care more sustainable?
We have ethical, professional, management, economic and self-interest reasons to move to sustainability. Ethically, we have a duty not to harm patients. We know that climate change, pollution, and biodiversity loss are negatively impacting health. It follows that we need to reduce the impacts of these three changes as much as possible. We also have professional responsibilities to manage resources, lead, and act as advocates for best practice. There is a growing body of evidence that limiting the effects of environmental harm makes economic sense. It is in our own self-interest.
If we do not deal with the environmental issues now, we will bequeath them as a legacy to our children and grandchildren. This is not how we want to be remembered.
Finally, how can anyone not want to preserve the beautiful planet we live on.
Q2: What do you believe is the most significant change health care should undertake?
Health care providers need to engage more on this issue. The public, patients, and politicians look to us for guidance on issues related to health. Silence on environmental change sends a signal that perhaps these problems are not such a big threat. So, we need to be active, and vocal and all of us in health need to step up. We need to engage in changing our health care systems, which in turn will change patient, public and political behaviour.
Q3: What are the biggest barriers and facilitators?
Work has been done on identifying barriers. They fall into three categories. There are financial drivers which incentivize damaging behaviors. For example, many medical organisations derive significant income from annual meetings, which are associated with a significant travel footprint. There are also system wide barriers, such as a lack of awareness and education on the challenge of environmental change. Perhaps most importantly, there are numerous psychological factors which tend to block action. For example, temporization, where immediate threats are prioritized over long-term threats, is a normal human behaviour but not helpful in this context. We need to recognize these barriers and create messages and mechanisms to enable health care providers tackle them.
Q4: What opportunities do you see in this field?
The opportunities are huge. It’s very rare during a professional career that an opportunity presents itself to contribute in research and education and clinical care at the start of a major paradigm shift. It is still early days in the engagement of the profession on the intersection of health and environmental change, important work can be done which may significantly shape future actions on one of the most pressing issues of our time.
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Desmond emphasizes that the future of health care depends on proactive efforts to address environmental challenges. By embracing sustainability, such as reducing travel emissions and shifting to greener practices, health care can lead the way in protecting both human health and the planet for generations to come.
The Coalition thanks Desmond for sharing his passion, and advice to inspire the current and next generation of change makers.
Begin your green health care journey by exploring sustainable solutions, such as the transportation strategies mentioned above: https://greenhealthcare.ca/transportation/
Read more by Desmond, The Impact of Climate Change, Pollution, and Biodiversity Loss on Digestive Health and Disease HERE.
