SDG Detail

EPH 556 Health Care Environmental Sustainability Practicum

Postgraduate course

Project description

If the U.S. health care sector were a nation itself, it would rank thirteenth in the world for greenhouse gas emissions. Health care is an enormous and complex system, in need of environmental health assessment and sustainability science to measure and mitigate pollution and public health damages. Policy and business innovation is also essential to implement pollution preventive efforts while maintaining patient safety and quality care. In this course, interdisciplinary student teams perform applied public health or practice projects related to health care, sustainability science, and public health. Each team works with a clinical (physician or nurse) and/or management mentor from Yale New Haven Hospital or its affiliates, or in collaboration with partners such as the National Health Service Sustainable Development Unit of the United Kingdom. Each group uses the opportunity to apply concepts and competencies learned in the classroom to the field of health care. This course should be of interest to students from the Schools of Public Health, Forestry & Environmental Studies, Management, Medicine, and Nursing. This course is one of the options available to students to fulfill the practice requirement for the M.P.H. degree and the F&ES capstone requirement.