UNIVERSITY MEDICINE & SUSTAINABILITY

Sustainability as a Core Competency for Health Professionals

In the face of climate change and environmental degradation, sustainability is increasingly recognized as a fundamental component of professional responsibility in the health sector. This talk explores how sustainability can be systematically integrated into medical university education and training for health professionals. It presents approaches to embedding sustainability into curricula through competency-based learning objectives, interprofessional formats, and a focus on systems thinking and planetary health. We will discuss how future health professionals can be empowered to take meaningful action in their practice. The aim is to inspire educators and institutions to treat sustainability not as an add-on, but as a core element of health education.

Sustainability Education at Universities: Challenges and Best Practices

Teaching sustainability is often targeted at persons lacking solid education in at least some of the disciplines involved (for instance either natural or social sciences). Examples will be given how to generate workable understanding nevertheless, and how to deal with the audience’s personal affection (such as climate anxiety or lack of self-efficacy) and individual behavior. Unfortunately, barriers against sustainable behavior need to be tackled, psychological ones as well as societal polarization. The presentation gives a short overview how to raise awareness of these phenomena, and how to increase communication skills regarding persons outside the own social bubble. This also includes climate change denial (in its various forms) and correctly debunking common misbeliefs.

Environmental change & health: The importance of (urban) nature for building individual & societal resilience

Climate change, pollution, and biodiversity loss threaten the health and well-being of millions globally. Rapid urbanisation is exacerbating many of these threats and some of the poorest are most vulnerable. Nature-based solutions, such as urban greening programs and peri-urban wetlands, can mitigate the impact of, for instance, urban heat islands, poor air quality, and flooding on community and individual health. Urban nature can also promote health and well-being by providing places to exercise, recover from stress, and build social capital – all important for a wide range of health outcomes. This talk will briefly summarise some of this evidence and argue that sustainable health begins with sustainably incorporating nature into the urban communities where a growing percentage of the world’s population lives and works.  

Sustainable Healthcare Innovations at the University Hospital of the Medical University Graz

The University Hospital of the Medical University Graz integrates sustainability into academic healthcare to enhance patient care while reducing environmental impact. Key initiatives include telemedicine and virtual care to improve accessibility, sustainable anesthesia practices to lower emissions, and digital health records to streamline operations. Green building principles and education programs further support environmentally conscious practices. These efforts position the hospital as a model for sustainable and innovative healthcare.

Empowering Care: Advanced Nursing Roles and Initiatives for Sustainable Health Systems

The presentation explores best-practice nursing models that contribute to sustainability in academic hospitals focusing on direct patient care. It highlights the implementation of Advanced Nurse Practitioner (ANP) on hospital wards, the RECOVER-E project (a digital assistant for patients undergoing joint replacement surgery), and educational interventions aimed at empowering patients and hospital staff. These examples demonstrate how nurse-led innovations can enhance the quality of care, optimize resources, and support sustainable healthcare delivery.

Current WHO Initiatives on Sustainability: Global Action Plan on Physical Activity

Within the framework of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) established in 2015, the World Health Organization (WHO) launched the Global Action Plan on Physical Activity 2018–2030. The vision is clear: “More active people for a healthier world!” The WHO has identified physical inactivity as a leading global health risk, contributing substantially to the burden of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as cardiovascular diseases, metabolic disorders including diabetes, respiratory diseases, cancers, and mental health conditions. These conditions collectively impose an enormous health burden and generate excessive costs for social security systems, estimated to exceed 70 billion USD annually. In alignment with the SDGs, the WHO has set the target of reducing global physical inactivity by 15% by the year 2030. Achieving this goal would simultaneously contribute to the attainment of multiple UN Sustainable Development Goals outlined in the 2030 Agenda, including SDG 2–5, 8–13, and 15–17. While seemingly modest, this target represents a formidable challenge, given that approximately one in four adults and three in four adolescents currently fail to meet the WHO’s minimum recommendations for weekly physical activity. 

Drawing on the example of prevalent diseases, the plan examines the pathophysiological mechanisms through which physical inactivity affects human health, assesses the likelihood of disease manifestation in relation to physical fitness levels, and underscores the role of obesity as a key driver of persistent low-grade chronic inflammation (metaflammation).

Sustainability in the Management of Child and Adolescent Obesity

Child and adolescent obesity represents a rapidly growing global health challenge, with profound long-term consequences for individuals and healthcare systems alike. Effective management needs to be implemented as early and effective as possible, requires a chronic care model that ensures sustained, adaptable, and multidisciplinary intervention. Current conservative treatments - including lifestyle modification, nutritional counseling, and behavioral therapy – do offer clinically relevantt effectiveness but often fail to deliver durable weight reduction and metabolic improvements. Surgical interventions, while more effective for select patients, raise questions about long-term safety, equity of access, and age-appropriate criteria. In this presentation, I will summarize outcome data for both conservative and bariatric approaches in young patients, highlighting their strengths, limitations. Beyond established modalities, critical research gaps will be discussed, particularly the need for scalable, cost-effective strategies that integrate medical, psychological, and social support. Digital health technologies offer promising avenues for innovation, enabling scalable personalized and continuous care while potentially reducing resource demands. However, robust evidence for their efficacy, safety, and integration into existing healthcare structures remains limited. By linking clinical evidence, implementation barriers, and opportunities for technological innovation, this talk will address how sustainable treatment models can be designed to meet the complex, long-term needs of young individuals living with obesity. The aim is to foster interdisciplinary discussion on how academic medicine can lead the development, evaluation, and scaling of interventions that are not only clinically effective but also socially and economically sustainable.

Sustainable Data-Driven Medical Research – Health Data Spaces and Data Donation as Key Enablers

Sustainability in medical research is not only about reducing environmental impact—it is equally about making research processes and resources efficient, reproducible, and reusable. Reusability of health data is a cornerstone of this vision, yet it is often hindered by fragmented systems, restrictive intellectual property frameworks, data protection concerns, and a lack of interoperability.

This talk presents best-practice examples of how these barriers can be overcome through health data spaces—federated, standards-based ecosystems that safeguard data sovereignty while enabling controlled access for research. These principles are at the heart of the emerging European Health Data Space (EHDS), which aims to harmonize health data governance and technical interoperability across Europe.

A central case study will be the Austrian flagship project Smart FOX, which paves the way for data donation of structured electronic health records (ELGA records) within a secure and interoperable health data space architecture. By combining technical innovation with transparent governance, Smart FOX demonstrates how citizen empowerment and innovative infrastructures can turn isolated datasets into a sustainable resource for medical discovery.

Urban forests as health infrastructure in extreme hot–dry cities
 
In Gulf cities, where summer heat can be extreme, trees serve as vital health infrastructure, reducing heat stress, improving air quality, and enabling safe outdoor activity. Despite this, urban nature is largely viewed as decorative rather than essential. Gulf cities are underpinned by advanced, city-wide treated sewage effluent (TSE) irrigation networks — unique globally and demonstrating foresight and a cultural understanding of the importance of urban nature. With this critical infrastructure already in place, the medical profession is in a unique and influential position to guide policy makers by framing urban tree care as a form of preventive medicine — a message that carries greater authority from doctors than from the horticultural disciplines — and by advocating for internationally recognised initiatives such as Tree Cities of the World. Drawing on over two decades of living and working in the region, this talk will show how medical advocacy for urban forests can lead to healthier, more resilient urban populations.

Dr Andrea MacNeill is a Surgical Oncologist at Vancouver General Hospital and BC Cancer, and a clinical associate professor at the University of British Columbia where she specializes in sarcoma and peritoneal malignancies. She is the founder and principal investigator of the UBC Planetary Healthcare Lab, an interdisciplinary research collaborative dedicated to creating health systems that promote both human and planetary health. As the Medical Director of Planetary Health for Vancouver Coastal Health, she is working on a transformational planetary health strategy for the health authority to mitigate the healthcare climate footprint while creating health and social value. She is an executive member of CASCADES, a pan-Canadian knowledge mobilization network dedicated to accelerating the transition to low-carbon, sustainable health systems in Canada. She is currently co-chairing a UBC/Yale-led Lancet Commission in sustainable healthcare.

My research interests lie at the intersection of healthcare and environmental sustainability. As a staff anaesthesiologist, I am particularly focused on reducing the environmental impact of anaesthetic practices, leading efforts to phase out the use of volatile (gaseous) anaesthetics both in the Netherlands and internationally.

Beyond clinical practice, I founded and currently direct the Amsterdam UMC Centre for Sustainable Healthcare. Here, I’m dedicated to bridging research and implementation to drive sustainable change within healthcare. My work involves supporting over 65 Green Teams, fostering a vibrant community of more than 4,000 engaged employees, and guiding a diverse team that includes PhD students, post-docs, and experts in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Health Technology Assessment (HTA).

Additionally, I represent the Faculty of Medicine in UvA Seven, the University of Amsterdam’s climate initiative, where I work on applying systems transformation to promote climate action and resilience. See: https://seven.uva.nl 

My research is deeply collaborative, and I actively partner with companies, governments, NGOs, and healthcare professionals in multidisciplinary initiatives aimed at achieving sustainability transitions in healthcare. As of 2025, I supervise 5 PhD Students and 4 Post-Docs in their work.