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Overview
Program
Who you will learn from
Who is this course for?
Register

Overview

Climate change impacts health and wellbeing, yet the Australian healthcare sector is estimated to be the source of over 7% of Australia’s total carbon emissions. As health services are starting to reduce their carbon emissions, it is important that decision makers and clinicians gain an understanding of how carbon footprints are determined from national to organisational to product level, as well as having the ability to critique the ever-increasing quantity of carbon footprints using life cycle assessment (LCA) being published in medical journals.

This in-person workshop and masterclass will involve detailed presentations and facilitated discussion by leading Australian experts in the field.

The program includes:

• A Healthcare Carbon Literacy Workshop (morning)
• Life Cycle Assessment Critique Masterclass (optional, to follow after lunch).

Program

Participants can expect to gain knowledge of:

• Healthcare carbon literacy and its importance
• The purpose and comparisons of different healthcare carbon footprint analysis methodologies
• In depth understanding of national, state (analysis of publications) and organisational (presentation of results) level healthcare carbon footprints
• Life cycle thinking
• An understanding of the critical components of a LCA
• Practical implications of clinical LCA.

Life Cycle Assessment Critique Master Class

Prerequisite: Participants are required to attend the morning session
When: 12:45 to 15:45
Where: Forum 1, Melbourne Connect, 700 Swanston St, The University of Melbourne, Carlton, VIC
Cost: $200 ($100 student, trainee and allied health rate) afternoon tea included
Register

Using the framework of ISO 14040 (Life cycle assessment – Principles and framework), we will be critiquing four published LCA papers from medical journals to determine what makes a high-quality paper.

Participants can expect to gain knowledge of:

• The importance of goal and scope, system boundary, and functional unit selection
• Data quality for life cycle inventories
• Integration of economic input-output data with process LCA data
• Sensitivity analysis
• Uncertainty analysis.

Who you will learn from

Dr Scott McAlister

Scott is a Research Fellow at the University of Sydney and the University of Melbourne. Since 2005 he has worked as a consultant, undertaking environmental life cycle assessments for a wide variety of industries. Starting in 2009 he became involved in performing assessments in healthcare, and subsequently authored and co-authored papers on the environmental impacts of a range of medical devices and interventions. 

Leading on from this, Scott has recently completed his PhD at the University of Melbourne on decarbonising healthcare. His research focused on how to incorporate carbon impacts into health technology assessments, calculating the carbon footprint of pathology testing and diagnostic imaging, the environmental and economic benefits of reducing pathology testing in a hospital department, and the incidence of unnecessary preoperative pathology testing. His work is currently focused on the carbon impacts of low-value care.

Associate Professor Forbes McGain

Forbes McGain is the inaugural Associate Dean, Healthcare Sustainability, in the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences at the University of Melbourne. He is an anaesthetist and intensive care physician at Western Health, Melbourne, Australia, and an Associate Professor (Medicine) at the University of Sydney. 

He enjoys being involved in research, teaching and education at the hospital, university and beyond. Forbes remains passionate about making seemingly small environmental sustainability changes to how we practice medicine that become magnified through every nations’ hospitals. His love of nature affects everything he does at work, home, and well, anywhere…

Professor Eugenie Kayak

Eugenie Kayak (FANZCA, MBBS, MSc, MPH) is the Enterprise Professor in Sustainable Healthcare in the Department of Critical Care, Melbourne Medical School.

Professor Kayak is a consultant anaesthetist at Austin and Alfred Health and in private practice. She is a member of the Chief Medical Officer Advisory Group for development of the National Health and Climate Strategy and Convenor of National Sustainable Health Care for Doctors for the Environment Australia (DEA).

Professor Kayak has worked with DEA, her own specialty, the AMA and wider medical profession for over a decade, to raise awareness of, and address, the health impacts of climate change and environmental degradation - including health care’s own impact.

Work with the AMA has resulted in a collaboration calling for the Australian healthcare sector to be net zero carbon emissions by 2040 and engagement of Australia’s specialist medical colleges to advocate for action from government and the health sector.

Who is this course for?

Both the workshop and masterclass are designed for all healthcare professionals, academics, researchers, managers and policy makers seeking a comprehensive understanding of healthcare carbon hotspots and life cycle assessment methodologies and interpretation. Participants will learn to critically analyse relevant studies and publications to assist in the evidence based impactful advances urgently needed to address healthcare’s carbon footprint.

Register

Register for the Workshop (morning)
Register for the LCA Masterclass (afternoon) 
NB:  Participants for the Masterclass are required to attend the morning session. Masterclass numbers will be capped at 32 participants, so register early to avoid disappointment.

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