Dr. Trevor Hancock

Founder, Canadian Coalition for Green Health Care

Dr. Trevor Hancock is a public health physician and health promotion consultant who has worked for local communities, municipal, provincial and national governments, health care organizations and the World Health Organization. The main focus of his work has been in the area of healthy cities and communities, an area he helped to pioneer.

He has been actively involved in the public health movement in Canada for many years, having been on the Board of Directors of the Ontario Public Health Association for a number of years, serving as President in 1986/7. Honours he has received include Honourary Life Membership in the Canadian Public Health Association (1990); Life Membership in the Ontario Public Health Association (1999); appointment as a Regents Lecturer at the School of Public Health, University of California at Berkeley (2000); the President’s Award, Public Health Association of BC (2004), and appointment as a Hallman Visiting Professor at the University of Waterloo (2008).

He has a longstanding interest in health and the environment, in the “conserver society” concept and the health and political implications of sustainable development. In 1989, he organized a national conference on health, environment and economy and continues to work to bring together the themes of health and sustainable development, particularly in the context of Healthy Cities, and more recently in the context of health hospitals. He is a founder of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment and chaired the Board from 1993 – 2003.

In recent years his views on the place of hospitals in their community and their role with respect to health promotion and healthy communities have led to consulting work with hospitals and to a number of articles and speeches on the topic. He is a founder of the Canadian Coalition for Green Health Care and in 2001 authored a major report on environmentally responsible health care in Canada. He has spoken and written extensively on the issue of Green Health Care, including a column for Health Care Quarterly from 2001 – 2005. Dr. Hancock is currently a Population and Public Health Consultant at the Ministry of Health in British Columbia.