Welcome to the MDH2E February 2012 News Roundup!

This month has brought warm weather and cool sustainability initiatives!

This edition includes updates on:

• The Maryland Health Care Sustainability Leadership Council
• UMMC’s Trailblazer Education Event: Energy Conservation – March 1
• Eco Hospital Jeopardy!
• Hospital Earth Day Activities
• MedStar Harbor Hospital’s Fresh Start on Recycling
• MedStar’s System-Wide Environmental Leadership Council
• Civista Medical Center’s Green Team Webpage
• Kaiser Permanente Purchasing PVC- and DEHP-free IV bags
• Chemotherapy Drugs Put Nurses at Doubled Risk for Miscarriage
• Nursing Updates
• Pharmaceutical Waste Updates
• Sustainable Food Updates
• And much, MUCH more!

Enjoy, and please let us know what’s going green at your facility!

Best,

The MD H2E Team

Looking for a low-cost, high yield green program for your hospital, which will benefit patients and staff alike? Come to University of Maryland Medical Center for a FREE event on March 1^st to learn easy changes you can make!

Trailblazer Education Series

ENERGY CONSERVATION

University of Maryland Medical Center with BGE—March 1st, 9-11 am

The green initiatives started by hospitals not only reduce our impact on the planet – they can cut costs, create goodwill with the community, and improve employee health and morale!

Which is exactly what University of Maryland Medical Center has done. Last year UMMC made a thorough assessment of its lighting needs and made comprehensive changes:

Turn off lights when not in use, use daylight when it’s sufficient, replace inefficient light bulbs with more efficient ones, install occupancy sensors and photo cell sensors, and establish a baseline to monitor changes. UMMC listened to nurses and implemented a quiet/low light time on patient floors! 

Learn from UMMC staff on programmatic issues and hear from Baltimore Gas & Electric on available grants and rebates to implement energy conservation programs.

To learn more, go to http://mdh2e.org/awards-recognition/2011-trailblazer-awards/

To register for this FREE event, please send your name, title, facility name, e-mail, and phone to Englund@son.umaryland.edu. Please RSVP by February 24^th.

Attendance is open to all. However, priority will be given to hospital and health care employees when limitations occur.

This article about green roofs and roof agriculture in Boston makes a great case:

“A roof farm is a type of green roof. A green roof is a system of layers that is laid over an existing roof. A green roof is beneficial to a building owner and the community because it protects the existing roof, doubling to tripling its life, thereby saving money and keeping materials out of the landfill. Green roofs also reduce a building’s energy costs by insulating in the winter and cooling the rooftop in the summer. Combine these benefits with green roofs’ ability to temper the effects of two common urban environmental problems – combined sewer overflow and the urban heat island effect – and you have a waste-eliminating, resource-protecting, CO2-reducing, food-producing powerhouse of a concept.”

For more:

http://www.sustainablebusinessleader.org/roof-agriculture-%E2%80%93-old-concept-comes-boston-a-new-form

Mass General in Boston implements easy program to encourage healthy food purchases; from a 1/19/12 press release:

A simple program involving color-coded food labeling and adjusting the way food items are positioned in display cases was successful in encouraging more healthful food choices in a large hospital cafeteria.  The report from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers will appear in the March American Journal of Public Health and has received early online release.

“We found that labeling all foods and beverages with a simple red, yellow and green color scheme to indicate their relative healthiness led patrons to purchase more of the healthy and fewer of the unhealthy items,” says Anne Thorndike, MD, MPH, of the MGH division of General Medicine, who led the study.  “We also found that moving items around to make the healthy items more convenient and visible led to further improvement in the nutritional quality of items purchased.”

The study authors note that most current point-of-purchase efforts to encourage more healthful food choices focus on labeling the calorie content of food, which will soon be required for many restaurants and food service vendors as part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. However, calorie information is only useful if people read and comprehend it – which requires understanding their own calorie needs, accurately estimating serving sizes, and having enough time to consider and act on the information provided.  Studies by psychologists and behavioral economists also have noted that individuals tend to maintain their typical behavior patterns and are more motivated by actions with immediate, rather than long-term rewards.

For more: http://www.massgeneral.org/about/pressrelease.aspx?id=1431