Last week, Janis Orlowski and I were honored to represent the AAMC at a White House event where leaders across the health care sector pledged to work together to decarbonize the U.S. health care sector and protect human health from the climate crisis. In conjunction with that event, AAMC signed the Administration's Health Sector Climate Pledge.
At the event, the Administration announced that 61 of the largest U.S. hospitals and health systems signed the pledge, and I was pleased that more than 40% of the signatories are COTH members or have COTH hospitals in their systems. More than 200 federal hospitals and health facilities from the Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Military Health System have also signed the Health Sector Climate Pledge. You can view the list of some of the participating hospitals, health systems, and other health organizations here on the White House Fact Sheet.
I encourage all of our member institutions-COTH member hospital and health systems as well as medical schools and their universities-to work toward reducing carbon emissions and preparing for the impact of climate change on your educational, research, clinical delivery, and community collaboration missions, with special attention to protecting the most vulnerable members of your communities. AAMC will continue supporting your efforts to make the kind of sustainable changes necessary to decrease academic medicine's carbon footprint and care for our patients and communities.
Has your organization signed the pledge?------------------------------
David Skorton
President and CEO
Association of American Medical Colleges
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