Dr Jenny Rivers is Director of Research and Development at Barts Health NHS Trust, has been selected by the Academy of Medial Sciences as a future global research leader, and is sustainability lead for UKRD. Here we share her blog post about how the research community can contribute to reducing its environmental impact.
The 2024 UKRD Summit was the second to include a focus on environmental sustainability, with a marked increase in enthusiasm and engagement from delegates, demonstrating the momentum this topic is gathering.
Research has such a vital role to play in the path to NHS Net Zero, as Dr Sophia Lentzos, Head of Sustainability at NIHR, presented in her Summit workshop; in the path to 80% reduction by 2040, around 15% of the target is attributed to ‘research, innovation and offsetting’. Striking as well, are the projections that in achieving a net zero UK economy over this timeframe, we would also see an estimated 5,770 lives saved per year from reductions in air pollution, along with 38,400 from increased levels of physical activity.
The impact of climate change on human health is clear and the workshop served as a timely call to action for the UKRD community as leaders and role models in the sector, both in tackling the contribution to carbon emission from research delivery (accounting for around 5% of NHS clinical activity in itself), as well as our responsibility to drive the generation and evaluation of evidence and innovative implementation of solutions into the NHS and beyond. Our response to this challenge must apply across the whole of the health and care sector, including primary care, community, non-NHS settings and beyond, particularly to mitigate the exacerbation of health inequalities as access to healthcare and research worsens due to the impact of climate change.
The environmental impact of clinical trials
We’ve known about the carbon impact of clinical trials for at least 15 years, when this was quantified by NIHR Evaluation, Trials and Studies Coordinating Centre, with the evaluation of 12 UK based academic trials. The resulting emission extrapolated from these, to the trials registered on clinicaltrials.gov at the time, reached a figure of 27.5 million tonnes (around half of the national emission of Denmark). However, more recent estimates, for example based on clinical research spending, estimate that this might be more like a staggering 100 mega tonnes of carbon per year (equivalent to the emissions of the whole of Belgium). However, despite the warning and subsequent exponential increase in threat from the climate crisis and the demonstrable link to human health, very little has been done at a systems level.
What can we do to improve our sustainability in research?
At the UKRD Summit, the NIHR launched a major pledge to climate change and sustainability in health and social care research, including next steps and a £25m funding call to launch in the autumn, which will coincide with the UN Climate Change Conference COP29 taking place in Baku, Azerbaijan from 11 to 22 November 2024. At the workshop, we explored the opportunities, challenges and additional resource needed in three areas:
- Human Health,
- Research Systems and
- Health and Social Care Systems.
Under each theme, groups identified a lack of knowledge, expertise and evidence and articulated a priority to quantify our carbon footprint without affecting quality or integrity.
We agreed that research that drives improved health outcomes is a priority, but to shift the social and environmental determinants of health, we need to rely on the combined power of thousands of small-scale interventions as well as the transformational impact of single largescale technological solutions to achieve maximum impact in health and care research. This resonated with words from Dr Nick Watts, Chief Sustainability Officer for the NHS who passionately believes that everyone has a role to play; “we’d get there if everyone does one thing to improve sustainability, but they need to do it by 9am tomorrow morning”.
I caught up with Sophia again recently at the Institute of Government and Public Policy’s Second Annual National Sustainable Healthcare Conference in London and she said. “I’m delighted to see the elevation in importance of this topic and it was a pleasure to talk to the UKRD community at the Summit. The groups produced some fantastic ideas and challenges, which we will be feeding into our priorities and actions at NIHR.”
In parallel with our experience at the UKRD Summit, over the last 12 months or so, this topic has really taken off and we have a number of groups, strategies and frameworks to support greater focus on environmental sustainability across health and care research. Other funders, including Wellcome Trust, UKRI and charities are now issuing guidance, as well as a general commitment to increased funding to address gaps and provide evidence to inform policy and practice. The Low Carbon Clinical Trials group, have also recently published some guidance and case studies which will be useful in our roles as UK R&D leaders.
It starts with you
Personally, I’m going to be kicking off a UKRD sustainability workstream later this year looking at existing work and where we can add value to drive this agenda, so I’m keen to hear from anyone with an interest in this area who would like to join me – could the one thing you do be getting involved in the sustainability working group?
This is an exciting and important topic for multi-sector research leadership across the global health and care ecosystem and I’m really looking forward to working with other UKRD leaders and reporting on our progress