Green Bioethics: Sustainable Health Care

Cristina Richie, PhD
Lecturer in Philosophy and Ethics of Technology, Delft University of Technology (TU Delft);
Joint Editor, Global Bioethics;
Head of the Netherlands unit (Rotterdam) of the UNESCO Chair in Bioethics;
Associate Fellow, Center for Bioethics & Human Dignity, Trinity International University (Deerfield, Il)

This conference is part of the 2023 Montreal Health Ethics Conference Series

(This conference will be held in English online)

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To attend this event on Zoom, please register by following this link

To see past conferences: YouTube channel of the Pragmatic Health Ethics Research Unit

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Summary of the presentation: 
Health care is ubiquitous in the industrialized world. Yet, every medical development, technique, and procedure impacts the environment. The Canadian health care industry expends an estimated 29.7 million metric tons (MMT), or 5.1% of the country’s emissions. Carbon dioxide emissions contribute to climate change, climate-change related health hazards, and perpetuate environmental racism.  Health care is ruining the environment. In response, Green Bioethics synthesizes environmental ethics and biomedical ethics, thus creating an interdisciplinary approach to sustainable health care. Through four principles—distributive justice, resource conservation, simplicity, and ethical economics—patients, doctors, and health care plans can move towards sustainable, just health care.

Biography :
Cristina Richie, PhD is a Lecturer in the Philosophy and Ethics of Technology department at the Delft University of Technology and was the School of Social and Political Science Research Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, University of Edinburgh in 2020. In 2021, she was endorsed by the British Academy for a UK Global Talent Visa. Richie was previously an Assistant Professor in the Bioethics and Interdisciplinary Studies Department at the Brody School of Medicine, East Carolina University (Greenville, NC). 

Her research is dedicated to just, sustainable health care, often from feminist, queer, or theological perspectives. In addition to her monographs, Principles of Green Bioethics: Sustainability in Health Care (Michigan State University Press, 2019); Environmental Ethics and Medical Reproduction (Oxford University Press, forthcoming), Dr. Richie is the author of over fifty articles in journals including the American Journal of Bioethics, the Journal of Medical Ethics, the Hastings Center Report, and Developing World Bioethics. 

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2023 SERIES THEME

Participatory, inclusive, eco-social health: How to innovate and build bridges between democracy, the environment and our health care systems?

More than ever, the interconnections between health and the environment are recognized and represent a burning issue for citizens.  But the power to influence social and natural environments depends closely on the existence of democratic institutions that make room for the voices of individuals and groups. To address these questions, this new series of conferences will address the links between, on the one hand, democracy and its institutions and, on the other hand, the development of sustainable health. Together, we will discuss marginalization and inclusion in the context of women's health, the links between sustainable health and prevention, access to green spaces and spaces for citizen voices and their impact on health, democratic reform of health systems, and many innovative experiments aimed at democratizing health and creating citizen spaces.

Because thinking about health is also working to improve it for everyone.