By Andrée Rochfort (Ireland) and Ulrik Bak Kirk (Denmark)
EQuiP Working Group Leaders on Sustainable Healthcare
During the 60th EQuiP Conference on 'The Future of Primary Care: Securing & Sustaining Quality for Everyone', Enrique Falceto De Barros, Alan Abelsohn & Özden Gökdemir updated the EQuiP network to meet the needs of Planetary Health and climate emergency; Planetary Health is a new field that focuses on the human health impacts of global environmental change.
They outlined the argument for adding 'Planetary Health Care' as an eighth attribute to Starfield’s primary care framework. This includes advocacy for sustainability, reducing healthcare’s ecological footprint, interventions to co-benefit the health of both patients and the planet, and importantly supporting human rights and the right to a healthy environment.
In collaboration with the WONCA Working Party on Environment, our mission is to lead Family Doctors in protecting the health of patients and communities from the impacts of environmental hazards and threats, and promote environmental and planetary health at both the local and the planetary level. We will achieve this by sharing of resources, interesting articles on environmental health, discussions on topics on environmental health relevant to family doctors, project development, quality improvement, green prescribing, etc.