Sustainability and Integrated Health Approaches

Increasingly, forward-thinking physicians and administrators are taking steps to envision human health in more complex ways. Today health specialists are being compelled to integrate psychological, biophysical, social and spiritual approaches into their assessments and practices.

‘Sustainable medicine’, once the passion of fringe physicians, has become a popular and responsible way to practice. And proponents are finding that 'integrational approaches' are not only good for the environment, but also good for business:

Green Healthcare Goes Mainstream
By Karen Edwards

Lawrence Rosen, MD, was “a fairly conventional pediatrician” when he finished his residency and began practicing medicine in New Jersey about a decade ago. But his years of training at Mt. Sinai Medical School did not quite prepare him for what he
encountered in his new practice. “I started to realize pretty quickly that there were many children with chronic health care illnesses who were not being served well by conventional medicine. I was seeing an increase in developmental disorders like ADHD and autism, rising rates of asthma and allergies. I felt inadequate to care for these kids with the conventional tools I had.”

Rosen’s search for solutions that would help his patients and their families led him to look at how the environment was affecting children’s health. He quickly came to an unsettling realization: he was part of the problem. The health-care system itself often has a negative impact on the environment. How to deal with all this? That’s when Rosen discovered the world of sustainable, or green, medicine.

Rosen says, “Sustainable medicine is practicing in a way that takes care of people, helps reduce our impact on our environment, and recognizes the impact of the environment on our health. We are sustaining health and we are sustaining the Earth.”

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