Environment and Healthcare, a two-way traffic: Challenges, Impacts, and Sustainable Solutions
In recent years, the influence of environmental factors on health has gained increasing attention across the healthcare sector. The environment plays a crucial role in shaping health outcomes, impacting everything from chronic exposure to pollutants and climate change to the design and operation of healthcare facilities. In return, healthcare impacts our environment, spanning from the waste produced to CO2 produced traveling to the hospitals. This Research Topic seeks to explore the multifaceted interactions between environmental factors and the provision of healthcare across various settings.
Key areas of exploration include:
• Impact of Air Quality and Pollution: Investigating how air pollution and indoor air quality affect health outcomes, including respiratory complications and recovery processes. Studies assessing interventions to mitigate these impacts within healthcare settings are encouraged. Additionally, how does healthcare impact the air quality through travel-associated CO2 production and gas emissions from healthcare facilities, such as anesthetic gases.
• Climate Change and Health Emergencies: Examining the consequences of climate change-induced events, such as heatwaves, natural disasters, and infectious disease outbreaks, and how these impact healthcare demand, emergency preparedness, resilient healthcare, and legal/legislative frames.
• Sustainable Practices in Healthcare: Developing and implementing environmentally sustainable practices within healthcare settings, including waste reduction, energy conservation, sustainable medical practices, and fiscal innovations.
• Healthcare Facility Design and Patient Outcomes: Evaluating how the design and layout of healthcare facilities, including ventilation and lighting, can affect patient safety, infection control, and overall health outcomes.
• Psychosocial and Ethical Considerations: Understanding how environmental stressors and sustainability practices impact the mental health and ethical decision-making of healthcare providers in various healthcare environments.
• New technologies making healthcare accessible to all eliminating the disparities: The use of technologies, such as AI, telemedicine, remote patient monitoring, enabling both patients and healthcare providers to lessen the environmental impacts.
This Research Topic aims to bring together a broad range of articles that address the intricate reciprocal relationships between environmental factors and healthcare. Contributions from multidisciplinary teams, including environmental scientists, healthcare professionals, and policy experts, are particularly welcome. By fostering a deeper understanding of these interactions, we hope to highlight innovative strategies and solutions that can enhance patient care while promoting environmental stewardship in healthcare.
We invite submissions that offer novel insights and practical approaches to integrating environmental considerations into healthcare, ultimately aiming to improve health outcomes and promote sustainable healthcare practices
Article types and fees
This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:
- Brief Research Report
- Case Report
- Classification
- Clinical Trial
- Community Case Study
- Curriculum, Instruction, and Pedagogy
- Data Report
- Editorial
- General Commentary
Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.
Keywords: Intensive Care, Anesthesiology, Disaster, Climate Change, Healthcare, ICU, Air Quality, Pollution, Ethics
Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
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