Preface

Sustainable public health: are we doing enough?

The mission of the Department of Public Health is to contribute to a better population health at local, national, and international levels. We aim to prevent people falling ill, and to make ill people better. It would be a paradoxical development if our activities would increase the carbon footprint and, thus, indirectly contribute to climate change. We cannot improve the health of some people, at the expense of decreased health among others. It is imperative that we should ask ourselves the question: are we doing enough in introducing sustainable work practices?

We have launched several initiatives in the past few years. We have implemented different policies to reduce our own carbon footprint. The rather easy measures were to introduce a strict vegetarian diet at all out functions, to push very hard that within Europe the train is the preferred mode of travel, and to welcome new employees with a gift of two trees planted for a better climate and more biodiversity. We now debate the more difficult measures: How can we greatly reduce long-distance flights? Can we incorporate sustainability considerations in choices how we conduct our own research and deliver our education? How should we organize our work offline and online with lowest footprint? We also take initiatives to embed planetary health into our research and education programmes.

In many organizations, including our department, interventions are developed to facilitate transition towards a more sustainable work practice. Each and every step may be small. In Public Health we know that the key to primary prevention is that many small steps collectively turn into a big step. As a department we will pursue more than ever a sustainable public health. We owe this to ourselves and to the future generations.

Alex Burdorf
Head of Department of Public Health