Vermont and New York’s healthcare systems are the best-equipped in the nation to weather the impacts of climate change. That’s according to a new report by the Commonwealth Fund and Northeastern University.
The study released this month looked at key indicators like air quality, flood risk, healthcare facilities, energy efficiency, and healthcare-worker commuting emissions to determine its rankings.
An evaluation of all 50 states and the District of Columbia found that, despite flood risks, Vermont’s healthcare system is the most durable in the face of climate change, due to its energy efficiency and clean energy policies.
New York ranked second overall, excelling in energy policies but facing challenges in air quality. New York ranked 1st on healthcare worker commuting emissions, reflecting widespread access to transit and lower per-employee emissions.
Lovisa Gustafsson is vice president of the Making Health Care Affordable program at the Commonwealth Fund, a liberal-leaning foundation that supports healthcare research. She notes climate change and corresponding extreme weather events are impacting Americans' health in many ways – from structurally damaging hospitals and clinics to straining the supply chain to putting patient health and sometimes even patient lives at risk.
"So we really saw it as essential to look at this and to develop the metrics for the scorecards so we could assess risks and point to improvements and things that states could do to improve the health and resiliency of their health system," said Gustafsson.
The report finds New York does well on energy efficiency and clean energy policy but still faces challenges, ranking 36th on healthcare sector greenhouse gas emissions and 34th on health care facility flood risk.
Matthew Eckelman, an Associate Professor and Associate Chair for research of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Northeastern University in Boston, says healthcare organizations can look to state and federal policy recommendations to implement changes and that they also have the power to make changes at their own facilities.
"There's many actions that healthcare organizations can take, especially for those that find themselves in flood prone areas or in areas with a lot of natural hazard risk and including from increasing extreme events from climate change, they can take protective measures for their own facilities, and that could be using updated resilience measures for their facilities, putting all the mechanical systems on the roof and avoiding putting important critical infrastructure in their basements in case there is flooding," said Eckelman.
The healthcare system in Florida, a state that has traditionally been a destination for Northeastern retirees, ranked near the bottom in its ability to hold up to a changing climate due to high flood risk, with 15% of healthcare beds in high-risk zones. Overall, Florida ranked 48th in the report, ahead of only Louisiana, Kentucky and West Virginia. In WAMC’s coverage area, Massachusetts ranked 8th and Connecticut ranked 20th.
Eckelman says although Vermont has borne several deadly and destructive storms in recent years, heat is less pronounced, and the state’s air quality is second to none. "Vermont's also been a leader in energy efficiency policy, helping to get efficient equipment into homes and businesses and many other agencies that are similar, you know, look to Vermont as a leader."
Eckelman says on the national level, air quality issues associated with transportation emissions are expected to decline. "We see those changing as vehicles get electrified and other areas of the transportation ecosystem get electrified, expect those emissions to go down.
Gustafsson says healthcare providers and the entire healthcare system have a critical role, not just to prepare facilities to withstand climactic events.
006 "But they can stay open to serve patients and take care of their employees when they [climactic events] come, but they can also help prevent them through various mitigation efforts. So if they measure their emissions, if they reduce their waste, if they try to become more energy efficient, all these things can help reduce the impact of climate on health and hopefully lead to better health outcomes down the road," Gustafsson said.
