Healthcare Divest from Fossil Fuels

Health professionals are calling on the US health sector to address the sector's ongoing institutional investments in fossil fuels - the most significant source of health sector greenhouse gas emissions still wholly ignored by US health sector leaders. Since 2019, our campaign has engaged executives at major private US health systems, hospital finance VPs, leaders of leading US healthcare policy organizations including the National Academy of Medicine, Healthcare Without Harm and others, advocating for fossil fuel divestment as an actionable and necessary goal across the sector in support of their well-publicized pledges to "decarbonize health." While the health sector widely acknowledges climate change as an urgent global health threat meriting a strong health sector response, US healthcare leaders continue to ignore the sector's direct institutional investments in fossil fuels - the root of the problem - further worsening the well-established, widespread harms to health and healthcare delivery, and profound health disparities, connected to climate change and accelerating weather extremes. Health professionals are trained to protect health and 'First Do No Harm'. We owe this to our patients and our communities across the world. We expect no less from the institutions who employ us. In the era of climate change it's time healthcare divest from fossil fuels.