The University Health Network (UHN) was awarded three Climate Champion Awards in the 2020 Health Care Climate Challenge, which took place in Paris, France on December 4, 2015.
The awards were officially announced and presented at the Conference on Climate Change and Health Care. Their aim is to recognize the hospitals, health systems and organizations at the forefront of the movement towards low-carbon health care.
The UHN received the Gold award for Climate Resiliency and Silver awards for Energy Efficiency and Climate Leadership. The awards, presented by Global Green and Healthy Hospitals, focus on three key areas of the Climate Challenge:
- Mitigation – reducing healthcare’s carbon footprint;
- Resilience – preparing for the effects of extreme weather and the shifting burden of disease; and
- Leadership – educating staff and the public while promoting policies to protect public health from the effects of climate change.
The Coalition has worked with UHN to improve resiliency while developing the Health Care Climate Change Resiliency Toolkit, which is a free assessment resource for all healthcare facilities, and can be found at www.greenhealthcare.ca/resiliency/toolkit.
