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Description
Health and health care profoundly are shaped by climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution. At the same time, the healthcare sector itself is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, resource extraction, and waste. This creates a deep and uncomfortable contradiction: our systems designed to protect health are helping to drive the conditions that undermine it.
This open-access book brings together the most important recent developments in research, policy, and practice on healthcare sustainability and translates them into concrete, actionable insights for everyday work settings. It shows how planetary health, equity, and clinical quality are inseparable and why sustainability in healthcare is not optional but essential.
The book is structured around core sustainability priorities in healthcare: promoting (public) health and wellbeing for all, rather than focusing on curing disease; building knowledge and awareness of sustainable healthcare; reducing CO2 emissions; advancing circular practices; and minimizing the environmental impact of medicines. Additional chapters address cross-cutting themes such as ethics, behavioural change, health technology, and the broader societal role of healthcare professionals as change makers. While many examples stem from the Netherlands, authors come from across the globe and the approaches and lessons are applicable across health systems and professional contexts.
This international edition goes beyond an updated translation by adding new perspectives and content. A contemporary preface situates healthcare sustainability within the planetary health context, while in-depth interviews with global health experts such as Seye Abimbola and Maria Neira offer insights into current challenges and future directions. A foreword by Iris Martine Blom and Andy Haines further highlights the urgency and relevance of action.
Written in an accessible and engaging style, the book speaks to health workers, policymakers, managers, educators, and researchers who recognise that caring for patients today must not come at the expense of increasing present and future health inequalities and who are ready to take responsibility for building health systems that operate within planetary limits. Ultimately, the book offers a hopeful perspective, demonstrating how collective action within the health sector can drive meaningful change and help build healthier, fairer futures for both people and planet.
Foreword.- Editors' note.- Introduction.- Chapter 1: Healthy People, Healthy Planet: Promoting Planetary Health by Protecting, Preserving, and Promoting Health.- Chapter 2. From Awareness to Action: The Role of Planetary Health Education.- Chapter 3. Tackling Healthcare Carbon Emissions.- Chapter 4. A Guide to Circular and Resilient Healthcare.- Chapter 5. Promoting Sustainable Use of Medication.- Chapter 6. Climate Justice: An Ethical Perspective on Making Healthcare More Sustainable.- Chapter 7. Behaviour Change: Will Anything Come of It? .- Chapter 8. Medical Technology: Villain or Friend? .- Chapter 9. Caring for Society: The Role of the Healthcare Professional, from Coffee Room to Climate Summit.- Closing Words.- Appendix A Poverty is the most important cause of ill health, yet we keep treating it as an afterthought. .- Appendix B POLYPHANT 2024.- Appendix C Questions for Reflection: Justice, Health, and Climate.- Appendix D Is there another way? .- Appendix E This isn t about green vs anti-green politics. This is about life. .
Dr. Jurjen Luykx is a clinical scientist at Amsterdam UMC and GGZ in Geest. He has a research background in psychiatric genetics and a broad interest in neurobiological, clinical, environmental, and societal issues related to psychiatry, including planetary mental health. He spearheads several initiatives related to planetary mental health (Lancet Psychiatry Commission on Climate Change and Mental Health), and research into making psychotropic medication use more sustainable.
Dr. Juliette Mattijsen is a physician, activist, and researcher working at the intersection of health and justice affiliated with the University Medical Centre Utrecht. Through her medical practice, she was confronted with the deeply political nature of health, shaped not only by access to care, but by inequality, climate breakdown, and colonial legacies. These experiences led her to focus increasingly on activism, both within and beyond the healthcare sector. Juliette works towards a new narrative on health, engaging with themes such as the social and political determinants of health, the right to self-determination over land and bodies, the decolonisation of medicine, and the building of collective alternatives rooted in care, solidarity, equality, and wellbeing.
Dr. Evelyn Brakema is a GP and post-doctoral researcher on sustainable healthcare at the Leiden University Medical Centre (LUMC), and the co-founder and chair of the Dutch Green Health Alliance (Groene Zorg Alliantie) in the Netherlands, which she helped establish as a grassroots network to mobilise health professionals towards action for planetary health. It is one of the most robust sustainability networks in healthcare, connecting over 250 local and national Green Teams (more than 10,000 health professionals). Now, Evelyn is a national figurehead for the transition to sustainable healthcare in the media and (inter)national events. Evelyn was awarded Sustainability Champion of the Year (Health Care Without Harm Europe, 2025).
Dr. Joyce Browne is a medical doctor and epidemiologist dedicated to advancing global maternal health, health equity, planetary health, and fair and sustainable partnerships in global health. Her work connects research, education, and capacity strengthening in high, low, and middle-income countries. She is an Associate Professor of Global Health at the University Medical Center Utrecht, and affiliated with the Faculty of Law, Economics and Governance (REBO) of Utrecht University, The Netherlands.
Dr. George Downward, originally a medical doctor from New Zealand, George now leads the Planetary Health and Exposome team at the University Medical Centre Utrecht. With backgrounds in clinical medicine, global health, and environmental epidemiology, he leads multiple lines of research and education, examining our changing world and how those changes (often unfairly) impact our health.
Noa Kolpa is an activist and medical student affiliated with the Department of Global Public Health & Bioethics at the University Medical Center Utrecht. Driven by a deep love for nature and the planet, her work and engagement focus on planetary health, mental health, and epistemic justice. Across her studies, teaching activities, and activism, Noa works to challenge dominant knowledge systems and to amplify the voices of those who have been systematically excluded. She is committed to building more just and compassionate forms of care, and to contributing to collective movements that place humanity, connection, and wellbeing, for both people and planet, at their core.
