The health sector and Climate change are in a tangled relationship. Climate change has adverse effects on human health, and healthcare's climate footprint is equivalent to 4.4% of global net emissions. (HCWH, 2019) How can this be reversed? Climate Smart Healthcare is the answer. 

Climate Smart Healthcare is an approach encompassing both low-carbon and resilience strategies in an overarching framework. Here, hospitals can embrace both mitigation and climate resilience strategies in order to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and to survive extreme weather events.

Strategies that contribute to both system resilience and climate footprint reduction may include:

1.. Establishing health sector facilities with access to public transportation.

2.. Deploying on-site energy generation including solar and other renewable sources and Combined heat and power, 

3.. Building with natural ventilation,

4.. Purchasing energy-efficient medical devices

5.. Changes in Health delivery such as telemedicine. 

Findings suggest that these interventions have also enabled hospitals to decrease their reliance on large power grids and infrastructure, and to better withstand situations that disable centralized infrastructure. 

Climate-smart health care: A low-carbon and resilience framework for health sector action, 2019

Health care’s climate footprint by Healthcare Without Harm