Research Australia Response to the Consultation on a National Health and Climate Strategy

This submission responds to the Department of Health’s June 2023 discussion paper on Australia’s first National Health and Climate Strategy, which aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the health system and strengthen the resilience of the health system and communities to climate change. Research Australia supports the proposed objectives, principles and emissions reduction focus areas, but suggests that the resilience of the health system and of communities be treated as separate objectives, and that Scope 1 emissions and the travel and transport focus area include travel by patients and their families to access care. It cites Roy Morgan polling commissioned in June 2023, in which 40.4% of Australians reported being affected by climate change, 10.7% reported a related physical illness, 12.5% a related mental illness, and 50.2% said research on climate and health should be a higher government priority. Its main proposal is a funded Centre for Sustainable Healthcare Innovation to identify mitigation opportunities across supply chains, medicines and gases, waste and models of care, and to seek and support solutions, including from start-ups through a stage-gated process. Case studies of the medical device company Stelect and Bond University’s Institute for Evidence Based Healthcare illustrate waste reduction and reducing unnecessary care. It maintains that the evidence-informed principle should include creating new evidence, and that research identified by the Strategy’s proposed scan should receive new funding rather than relying on the NHMRC Medical Research Endowment Account or the Medical Research Future Fund.