Environmentally sustainable healthcare
Project leader: Dr Sarah Briggs, Clinical Lecturer in Medical Oncology
Healthcare has a big impact on the environment. The NHS produces 5% of the UK’s carbon emissions, and has been at the forefront of international efforts to develop more environmentally sustainable care.
The focus of Sarah’s clinical lectureship (CL) work has been on understanding public and patient perspectives on this transition. Working with Dr Gabby Samuel and Miranda MacFarlane at King’s College London, she undertook qualitative focus groups across the UK to understand public experiences, values, and beliefs about the environmental impact of healthcare and efforts to address this. They have published papers on ethics of care and context in how people care for the environment, and co-benefits approaches. Further work exploring communication with the public is in progress.
In the latter part of her CL, Sarah will be undertaking a study funded by an Academy of Medical Sciences Starter Grant for Clinical Lecturers, “Developing environmentally sustainable cancer care from patients’ perspectives: a qualitative research study based on melanoma care”. Through interviews with patients with experience of melanoma treatment, her project aims to understand:
- where patients see the opportunities for improving sustainable cancer care;
- whether they want to be part of decisions about how environmentally sustainable cancer care is developed by the NHS;
- what the implications of these findings are for clinicians and policymakers.
Sarah is also delighted to be providing a health perspective as a collaborator on an Agile sprint of “NetZeroEd”, a project led by Dr Steve Puttick in the Department of Education, developing a framework for Net Zero curriculum design.
November 2025
