FMLM joins the UK Health Alliance on Climate Change and commits to making events more sustainable

The UKHACC brings together Britain's leading health institutions, representing over 900,000 health professionals, to advocate for responses to climate change that protect and promote health.

The Alliance communicates the relationship between health and climate change to government, the public and other health professionals, and its members include many of the Medical and Nursing Royal Colleges, the Royal Society of Medicine, the British Medical Association, the Lancet and the Faculty of Public Health.

Joining the UKHACC is a key milestone for FMLM, as it continues to develop its sustainability agenda. On top of that, FMLM is acting to make its events even 'greener'.

Professor Rich Withnall, FMLM CEO said: 

"The climate crisis is a health crisis and as such clinical leadership has a role to play in efforts to tackle it, which is why I am delighted that FMLM has joined the UK Health Alliance on Climate Change.

"Becoming a member of the UKHACC adds the collective voice of clinical leaders to a growing coalition advocating for greater action to tackle and raise awareness surrounding the devastating impacts of climate change on health.

"Climate change is having and will continue to have a huge impact on the health and wellbeing of populations across the globe, and is worsening health inequalities. Not only will it have an increasing impact on patients, but it is being inadvertently exacerbated by how healthcare systems currently operate and deliver care.

"Healthcare accounts for approximately 5% of global emissions; in the UK alone, the health service employs over 1.4m people and has a huge, globe-spanning supply chain. From glass (windows and ampoules) to steel (buildings and needles), refrigeration and packaging, transport, chemicals and food, there are few businesses with which the NHS doesn't interact.

"But our business is saving lives, and not a single person or business engaged in healthcare can justify harming the planet and other people as collateral damage. As the Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stated in 2022 'Any further delay in concerted global action will miss a brief and rapidly closing window to secure a liveable future'.

"There are a lot of us in healthcare and if we all act together, we can deliver change. We must prioritise the reduction of our personal and organisational carbon footprints, and move our monies away from fossil fuel investors."

Richard Smith, Chair of the UK Health Alliance on Climate Change said: 

"We are pleased to have FMLM join UKHACC because every new member increases our capacity to respond to the climate crisis, the major threat to global health, and we are particularly pleased to have leaders and managers because despite having 47 members we have not until now had health managers, a vital group."

As well as becoming a member of the UKHACC, FMLM has also signed up to the Holborn Declaration, a pledge to minimise the carbon footprint associated with meetings and conferences. By committing to this declaration, FMLM will change the way it runs its events, including seeking to use venues which source 100% renewable electricity, minimise travel powered by fossil fuels and avoid or minimise flights for speakers, and seek to serve only local, seasonal plant-based food.

Professor Withnall said: "We're proud to commit to the Holborn Declaration and, via the UKHACC, promote for the public benefit the conservation, protection and improvement of the physical and natural environment and the advancement of health."