Bupa, the international healthcare company, has partnered with global NGO, Health Care Without Harm (HCWH), as part of its efforts to work with others in shaping the delivery of healthcare to benefit people and planet health.
This collaboration is part of Bupa's ambition to reduce the environmental impacts of the health sector and drive the transition to sustainable care.
By partnering with Health Care Without Harm, Bupa aims to scale local, on-the-ground action that will tackle emissions and reduce the environmental impact of healthcare, including a focus on single-use items, patient travel, hospital emissions and anaesthetic gases.
Bupa will share best practice, new insights and practical steps that can help achieve critical change at pace with HCWH's Global Green and Healthy Hospitals network, which represents over 70,000 hospitals and health centres across 80 countries. In addition, Bupa and Health Care Without Harm will facilitate cross-sector collaboration to overcome barriers to delivering sustainable healthcare such as waste, transport, energy and food.
Anne LePetit, Chief Medical Officer at Bupa, said: “Joining forces with Health Care Without Harm – one of the leading global voices on people and planet health – presents a huge opportunity to address some of the biggest sustainability challenges within our sector. Over the next three years, we'll work together in Europe, Latin America and the Asia-Pacific region to accelerate the transition to sustainable healthcare - reducing the environmental impact of care that we fund and deliver and supporting others to do the same.”
Gary Cohen, President and Founder of Health Care Without Harm, said: “There is unprecedented opportunity and significant momentum within the health care sector to reduce its impact on the climate crisis and transition toward a sustainable, low-carbon, resilient future. We must continue to work together to create opportunities to lead the way to a society grounded in health and equity. By partnering with Bupa, we can further ramp up our efforts to drive long-term, meaningful progress on this agenda.”
This partnership with Health Care Without Harm builds on existing collaborations between Bupa and a wide range of stakeholders including businesses, policymakers, NGOs and philanthropy organisations, which aim to accelerate action towards a sustainable future.
Bupa will share updates on the partnership and key outcomes in the coming months.
About Bupa
Established in 1947, Bupa's purpose is helping people live longer, healthier, happier lives and making a better world. We are an international healthcare company serving over 50 million customers worldwide. With no shareholders, we reinvest profits into providing more and better healthcare for the benefit of current and future customers. Bupa has businesses around the world but, principally, in the UK, Australia, Spain, Chile, Poland, New Zealand, Hong Kong SAR, Türkiye, Brazil, Mexico, India, the US, Middle East and Ireland. We also have an associate business in Saudi Arabia.
Our sustainability strategy
As a healthcare company we have an important role in addressing climate change, and a responsibility to act now. In 2021, sustainability was included in our corporate strategy, and in 2022, we launched our sustainability strategy, outlining our ambition to help tackle this challenge, and ‘making a better world’ for colleagues, customers, communities and wider society.
Our strategy has a clear net zero goal by 2040 underpinned by 1.5 degree aligned Science Based Targets (SBT) validated by the SBT initiative (SBTi), and an interim scope 1&2 2025 target. To set credible and ambitious targets we joined the UN-backed Race to Zero campaign, aligning our plans to tackle emissions with the Paris Agreement.
About Health Care Without Harm
Health Care Without Harm is an international nongovernmental organization that works to transform health care worldwide so that it reduces its environmental impact, becomes a community anchor for sustainability, and a leader in the global movement for environmental health and justice.
With regional offices on four continents and partners around the world, Health Care Without Harm has led the global sustainable health care movement for nearly 30 years.
