Abstract

Ten years ago, when I was president and chief executive officer of Rady Children's Hospital in San Diego, if you had asked me about our commitment to environmental sustainability or about the hospital's carbon footprint, I would have given you a blank look. The issues were simply not on my radar screen. And that was true of most health care leaders.The good news? Environmental sustainability is becoming a health care priority, and exciting progress is occurring. In Greening Health Care: How Hospitals Can Heal the Planet, Kathy Gerwig eloquently relates how one leading large health care system, Kaiser Permanente, achieved remarkable results in responding to the environmental health challenge over the past several years.