Hi,

This is my second blog to let you know what has been happening in Leicester so far.

1) PHEMS - we have been having some trouble with this as the lady in charge was stuck in turkey but we are now on track. We have a contact for a clinical leader for our module who we will get in touch with. We need to decide whther our SSM will be phase one or phase two - probably phase one as it is less clinically orientated but the exam must be very stribgent for it. We need to meet up to discuss this porperly

2) We are setting up our own leicester google mail address so we can give it to people

3) Managerial - we have written and sent our letter to our contact for a managerial project to target in a hospital in leicester. We need to meet really before the meeting to discuss our "tactic"

4) Clinical project - I have now got a clinical contact who is interested but doesn't know how we will go about it in terms of method. I will be phoning him to brainstorm more in depth.

Targets: 1)Meet with Mo and Rida to discuss PHEMS properly and also managerial meeting
2)Set up managerial meeting!
3) Talk to mustafa about how my method can be conducted before I ring my contact.

P.s. if anyone has any tips on the clinical projects I.e. methodology that would be great!

Lucy

Newcastle: Blog number two

Hope it’s all going well for everyone!

So this is what I have been up to over the last couple of weeks:

1. Some reading on national and local resources-still ploughing through Stern’s “Blueprint for a safer planet.”
2. David Pencheon kindly identified some key contacts in the North East Region.
3. I wrote a letter to the Strategic Estates Adviser to NHS North East at the Strategic Health Authority. We arranged a meeting at the Strategic Health Authority, situated just outside Newcastle in Newburn (not quite sure why I’m setting the scene in quite such detail).

Meeting Outcomes:

1. I certainly learnt a lot! The Strategic Estates Adviser (SEA) had a wealth of experience and expertise in sustainability within the NHS. We went through the BREEAM (Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method): Healthcare standard. We focussed on the chapter on transport- as this is the area in which I had expressed an interest.

2. FOCUS: The SEA advised that I focus on one aspect. I had been tentative about having a fixed agenda as I had been hoping that there would be an existing project/ network that I could join up with. I am still hoping to link up with others working on existing projects…But in the meantime I am going to look at transport across the strategic health authority.

3. BACKGROUND READING: SEA will send BREEAM: Healthcare standards documents- the chapter on transport will be particularly useful. I was given a copy of the Sustainable Development Unit’s procurement carbon reduction workbook to read.

4. KEY CONTACTS: SEA will send a contact list for the Sustainable Development Leads for the North East Strategic Health Authority.

5. REPORT ON TRAVEL: I will contact each of the Sustainable Development Leads asking for a copy of each trust’s “Green Travel Plan” (something that each trust is supposed to have). The SEA felt it would be useful for the Strategic Health Authority to combine the information into one document as they do not have this information. Within the report, I will compare NHS trusts to one another as well as to a model travel plan as set out by BREEAMS/ the Sustainable Development Unit. I will feed the document back to the Sustainable Development Leads as the information may enable trusts to learn from those that have performed slightly better. Throughout this process I will be in contact with Mustafa/ David Pencheon/ and the SEA seeking advice about how best to present the data and what to do with it.

TROUBLESHOOTING

• The SEA warned me that some of the Sustainable Development Leads may not respond as they are not officially appointed positions. If this happens I will contact the Trust exec. and go from there.
• If I receive an overwhelming amount of data I will try to find one or two other medical students to help put the report together.

I am pleased by the positive response from the SEA, and excited about having a focus and a potential project to get stuck into. Woop!

Much love xxxx

The latest in Sheffield...

Hey all,

So things are looking up here in the steel city :) Heres the latest:

GP progress...
I've had a really positive response from a practice in Sheff who has already made substantial progress to becoming 'green'. They've given me the contacts for some other practices who they know are also interested in doing a similar thing but haven't quite got around to doing it yet...cue the 'donkey workers' (BCMCCP members!) I'm hoping to get in touch with them ASAP: ideally I'd like to calculate their current carbon footprint, then implement some carbon reduction measures, and finally assess their progress over the coming 7 months and use this as a case study for sustainable development within a primary care setting. Very exciting news is the GP 10:10 checklist is almost finished - based it on some past correspondence that Frances had had and asked the Sheff GP for their feedback. Elly is now going to get her GP practice in Brighton to feedback as well and then hopefully we can get that up and running on the 10:10 and Campaign for Greener Healthcare websites.

Food fun ...
I'm yet to contact the man in charge of this at Sheff NHS Trust - the reason being I tried to contact John Hughes first - has done some really amazing work with Nottingham NHS trust in terms of food and catering, if you have a minute you can see a summary of what he acheived here: http://www.corporatecitizen.nhs.uk/casestudies.php/14/nottingham-university-hospitals-nhs-trust-sustainable-food-service/2
to see if he could give me any advice before heading into it feeling completely blind...But unfortunately I didn't get any response. Anyway, I've done a bit of reading around it though still much more needed but I'm going to hopefully write to the Sheff man in charge and see what response I get and take it from there. Has anyone got any draft/final letters they've sent to chief execs and have had positive responses from? Did we get any further with designing a draft template letter? Theres something veeeeeery exciting going on in Sheffield soon which I think could help get some results with the trust....

...Sheffield Food Festival and Food Plan!
Stumbled across this during some internet roaming and looks like it could be the perfect motivations for Sheff NHS trust to get themsleves into gear with more sustainable food procurement policy. Its the brainwave of a group of people called The Public Health Improvement Team in Sheffield who work to 'address the wider determinants of health and well being' and work with NHS Sheffield amongst others. The Food Plan is a work in progress which aims to : "draw together some of the key issues affecting food in Sheffield. Part of this will focus on healthy eating and people’s access and ability to cook safe, nutritious and affordable food. As well as this, issues such as the environmental impact of the food we eat, the local food economy and our food security will be addressed." Amazing!! So...emailed to find out what the plan is regarding Sheff NHS and awaiting a response. No reply as yet so I think I'm going to go in person next week as their office is easily accessible and in the town hall-always works better having a face to a name as well! The Food festival is planned sometime in June and is there to support the key themes of the Food Plan as well as to celebrate 'Sheffield's culture of food' (theres gonna be alot of pie and Hendersons relish! (check out sheff's own version of Lee&Perrins you can even get a tshirt: http://www.hendersonsrelish.com) . I thought if we could get it sorted it would be a brilliant opportunity to have our own BCMCCP stall and offer the Carbon Addict screening??!! What do people think??

Finding other students...
I've been in touch with two other students at Sheffield who have been involved with trying to set up a Healthy Planet and are really keen to get involved with BCMCCP stuff. Unfortunatey both of them have had/still have exams so we haven't got much further than swopping contact details and sending round a few emails. Up till now I've held off sending round mass emails to med school/environmental societies as I wasn't entirely sure of what exactly was planned for the next few months. However, now that there is a better idea I think it'll really help having a few more people on board (especially with the Food Festival and the donkey work thats going to be needed with the GP case study!) so that'll be something to think of soon...

The next few weeks:

• Finish GP 10:10 agreement - get it up on the websites so it can be downloaded if needed
• Get in touch with the interested Sheff GP practices and see what we can plan to acheive in the next 7 months
• Go down in person to the office of the Public Health Improvement Team and get involved with the Food Plan and the Food Festival - ask about the possiblity of a BCMCCP stall!
  
• Write a letter to the Sheff NHS food man in charge - ask about Food Plan - are they involved? What progress is being made...if any..!
• Update the other students at Sheff - discuss getting more people involved and what roles they could have
• Get on with the SDL!!! Haven't done as much as I would have liked by now so I'm going to really try and set aside some time each week specifically for this.
  

Wowza! That was a mammoth update - I'll try and update more regularly to avoid the mass essays in future....!

Hope alls well with everyone else? After falling out with my computer (no more virus but now apparently just need more RAM (or 'memory' for technophobes like me)) I'm hopefully going to be all Skyped-up and ready to roll in the next 1/2 weeks so hopefully be speaking to you all very soon....

Phil xx

Done so far - Coming up next

What I did :

- Help from above :
unfortunately there is no one occupied with climate change and health on a national level in Belgium. So far for help from above…
In the last national report on climate change there is one full page about climate change and health, where heatstrokes and malaria are mentioned. So one new aim is to get at least 5 pages in the next report, written by a newly formed student group!
I did find people at the university to help me, they are working in the field of environment and health (mostly doing biomarker measuring but interested in climate change too). They will help me for the practical part (case-study), but the problem remains for the educational part: there is no one with expertise.. (or he/she is hiding pretty well)

- Help from peers:
that is going very well, there are plenty of students interested in Ghent University and yesterday IFMSA Belgium was formed and I was there to talk about the program to get the other universities involved. Everyone was incredibly enthusiastic, so next thing is setting up Healthy Planet Belgium. I wrote an outline of the program (what, why, how, …) to send to everyone that should be involved.
Oh and I also have contact with some engineers for the case-study (dialysis)

- Global Health and CC in the curriculum: we don’t have SSC’s or PHEMS, we don’t have global health in our curriculum BUT we will have it soon (even sooner than I’d expected!). I got a crucial professor (head of the curriculum committee) exited and other students to help me. We will have a meeting (end of June) to make a proposal for a 3-4 days course on global health, this proposal will be presented by myself at the committee in November. I invited some important professors to the meeting (most are in the committee, so they have to decide on their own proposal -> higher chance it will work) to help us with the program ((one of them is Marleen Temmerman, who just won the british lifetime achievement award)).

- Case study:
I choose the dialysis unit for several reasons (expertise from the green nephrology program, it’s simple, and I have an idea (which will remain secret until the next blog)). I went there last week to see if they were interested, and they were (a lot, almost too much). Thursday I have a meeting with the policy-person of sustainability in the hospital to talk about the program and see what can be done in the dialysis unit. When I have the basic info on the carbon footprint of our dialysis unit I’ll contact Frances to see which interventions are most interesting.

What I’m going to do:

- May-june:
get the case-study going, delegate it to other students because I’m away in the summer
preparing proposal for global health and CC in the curriculum
set up Healthy Planet Belgium under BeMSA (Belgian medical students association)
communicating with the most interested students in the other universities, so there is someone
responsible for every university.
keep on looking for someone with expertise in the field on a national level..

- July-august-september:
I’ll be away, so mostly preparing for the next year, where the project will start in other universities. And probably a lot of mails with the dialysis unit to see how everything is going. And self-directed learning.

- Beginning next academic year:
presenting case-study + project in all the universities. Organize workshop/weekend/or what we find appropriate to help everyone get started. Lectures about CC and health so that at least everyone knows there is a link.. (this is all still quite vague, but it will get clear along the way
I will start with broader policy issues because that is what interests me (the case-study now is more to show the other students what kind of things they can do and to get to know everyone in the hospital that is involved in sustainability).

It has been a lot of fun so far, because everyone I talked to is extremely enthusiastic. It’s like they were all just waiting for someone to propose them to do something. Just what I need to keep doing this when I actually have to study for my exams J