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Incorporating Sustainability into Community-Based Healthcare Practice

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Abstract

There is now irrefutable evidence that climate change and increasing environmental degradation negatively affect population health. Healthcare plays an important role in addressing these emerging environmental challenges, considering its core aim is to protect and promote health. Preliminary research in Victoria, Australia, suggests that healthcare practitioners are endeavouring to factor in environmental concerns into their practice. Health promotion, an integral part of the healthcare system, is considered an area of practice that can support action on sustainability. Based on five qualitative case studies and key stakeholder interviews, this article explores key barriers and facilitators to incorporating sustainability into community-based healthcare practice. The findings demonstrate that despite multiple barriers, including funding and lack of policy direction, health promotion principles and practices can enable action on sustainability.

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Notes

  1. Health promotion is ‘the process of enabling people to increase control over, and to improve, their health. (World Health Organization 1986, p. 1).

  2. The terms ‘ecological sustainable development’, ‘environmental sustainability’ and ‘ecological sustainability’ are used interchangeably in the literature. Despite their differences in origin, they all stress the importance of valuing and maintaining the natural environment. Often, the term ‘sustainability’ is used as an all-encompassing term and will be treated as such in this article.

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Acknowledgments

The study was funded by Sustainability Victoria with support from the Victorian Department of Health. The authors would like to specifically acknowledge the contribution of Sue Noy (Healthy Environments Consultant) and all those who generously provided their support and time throughout the research process. We would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments in refining earlier versions of this article.

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  1. Faculty of Health, School of Health & Social Development, Deakin University, 221 Burwood Highway, Burwood, VIC, 3125, Australia

    Rebecca Patrick, Teresa Capetola, Mardie Townsend & Lisa Hanna

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  1. Rebecca Patrick
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Correspondence to Rebecca Patrick.

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Patrick, R., Capetola, T., Townsend, M. et al. Incorporating Sustainability into Community-Based Healthcare Practice. EcoHealth 8, 277–289 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10393-011-0711-0

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