Healthcare Divest from Fossil Fuels

Private health systems across the United States continue to provide $Billions to oil, coal and gas companies via their institutional investments. These investments fundamentally contradict global climate action policies and accelerate ongoing health harms directly linked to climate change and fossil fuel exposure. These investments represent the single greatest failure of the US health sector's response to climate change; a blatant violation of the core mission of healthcare: first do no harm. These investments are the single largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the health sector, yet remain wholly ignored by large healthcare policy organizations such as Healthcare without Harm which, for example, issues frequent rhetorical calls for health sector emission reductions - while saying literally nothing about the immense emissions impact of the sector's own investments in fossil fuels. The hypocrisy is staggering - and profoundly harmful to health. In 2021 the President of the National Academy of Medicine, Dr. Victor Dzau, co-authored a "Call to Action" for the US health sector to decarbonize, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, saying "Nowhere are the effects of climate change manifesting more clearly than in human health." Five years later (late 2026), major private health systems across the United States (Kaiser Permanente, Providence, Cleveland Clinic, Mayo -nearly every institution we've studied via federal reporting) still invest $Billions in fossil fuels. It's the opposite of 'decarbonization'. It's the opposite of "Healthcare without Harm". There is ample precedent. Hospitals divested from tobacco in the 1990's. As of mid 2026, some +1600 institutions have committed to fossil fuel divestment. This is the era of climate change. It's time healthcare -of all sectors- divests from fossil fuels.