Health Care Without Harm US and Houston Methodist Launch New Research Partnership

Health Care Without Harm US and Houston Methodist Launch New Research Partnership

Using more than a decade of data on how hospitals nationwide track their environmental progress, Health Care Without Harm and Houston Methodist will propose new quality improvement metrics that can help guide work across the healthcare sector.

Hospitals exist to protect people's health, but the healthcare sector's own environmental footprint can work against that mission. Healthcare accounts for roughly 8.5 percent of US greenhouse gas emissions, and hospital care makes up the largest share. Reducing that footprint is increasingly urgent: a growing number of states now require hospitals to report their emissions, and many hospitals nationwide have already pledged to cut emissions in half by 2030. Health Care Without Harm US has since stepped in to preserve that pledge and the momentum it built. 

While progress is being made, the lack of standardized methods for measuring and comparing success has frustrated efforts to apply quality improvement approaches to emissions reduction. Quality improvement frameworks have systematically improved care across key outcomes, including reducing patient safety incidents and maternal morbidity and mortality. Hospitals must reduce their share of collective contribution to pollution and emissions that drive extreme climate impacts, including heat, wildfires, floods, and other hazards. Identifying measures that strongly predict emissions reduction in hospitals would help hospitals track and compare progress and empower quality improvement teams with approaches to lower pollution as they would any other challenge. 

That is why Health Care Without Harm US and Houston Methodist Research Institute are launching a new research partnership to build shared standards for measuring hospital emissions reduction, an effort with the potential to shape how the entire healthcare sector tracks and improves its environmental performance going forward. The partnership will identify reliable, practical quality improvement measures that hospitals nationwide can adopt to show real progress. Such standardized measures could become a shared benchmark and guide how hospitals prioritize their emissions-reduction work for years to come.

Supported by the Commonwealth Fund, a nonprofit foundation dedicated to improving healthcare access, quality, and efficiency, the partnership will draw on data from Practice Greenhealth's (Health Care Without Harm’s US health facility network) Environmental Excellence Awards, the nation's leading recognition program for hospital environmental performance. Launched in 2002, the program helps healthcare facilities track their progress, compare results with peers, and strengthen their sustainability efforts over time. The dataset spans 11 years and includes more than 900 participating hospitals, making it the largest dataset of its kind. Houston Methodist was selected to lead the project after a competitive selection process because of its interdisciplinary research teams that blend expertise in quality improvement and environmental sustainability, as well as its data analytics capabilities.

“Our Environmental Excellence Awards program has long helped hospital partners advance their environmental initiatives and measure their impact,” said Health Care Without Harm CEO Emily Bancroft. “Now, for the first time, we're using that data to show the broader health care industry what's possible.”

“Houston Methodist is proud to partner with Practice Greenhealth and Health Care Without Harm to advance sustainability across healthcare,” said Edward A. Jones, President and CEO of Houston Methodist Research Institute. “This work builds on the experience and data contributed by Practice Greenhealth hospital partners through the Environmental Excellence Awards program. Through our Office of Sustainability, engaged physician leadership, and strengths in health science data, analytics and multidisciplinary research, Houston Methodist brings together the expertise needed to help translate that collective knowledge into meaningful insights and practical solutions for healthcare.”

Over the 18-month partnership, researchers will conduct several informational interviews with experts and health systems and share updates as the project progresses. Anyone interested in providing input can contact Coral Lozada (cmlozada@houstonmethodist.org).

This research is only possible because of the many hospitals that take part in the Environmental Excellence Awards. Health Care Without Harm and Practice Greenhealth handle this data carefully and responsibly. All data sharing is governed by a strict data use agreement, which every participating hospital agrees to when it joins the awards program. Access to hospital-level data is limited to the named research team, and individual hospitals will never be publicly identified in any resulting findings or publications. The data will not be sold, shared with additional third parties, or used to train external AI models. Questions about data use for this collaboration can be directed to ctomek@practicegreenhealth.org.