Health and health care are shaped by climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution. At the same time, the healthcare sector itself is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, resource extraction, and waste. This creates a deep and uncomfortable contradiction: our systems designed to protect health are helping to drive the conditions that undermine it.

This open-access book brings together the most important recent developments in research, policy, and practice on healthcare sustainability and translates them into concrete, actionable insights for everyday work settings. It shows how planetary health, health equity, eco-justice, and clinical quality are inseparable and why sustainability in healthcare is not optional but essential.

The book is structured around core sustainability priorities in healthcare: promoting health and well-being; building knowledge and awareness of sustainable healthcare; reducing greenhouse gas emissions; advancing circular practices; and minimizing the environmental impact of medicines. 

Written by authors across the globe, the approaches and lessons are applicable across health systems and professional contexts. The book speaks to health workers, policymakers, managers, educators, and researchers. It offers a hopeful perspective, demonstrating how collective action within the health sector can drive meaningful change and help build healthier, fairer futures for both people and planet.

This Open Access publication was made possible by the Institute for a Circular Society of the EWUU Alliance, and the Dutch Green Health Alliance.

Dr. Jurjen Luykx is a clinical scientist at Amsterdam UMC and GGZ in Geest. He has a research background in psychiatric genetics and a broad interest in neurobiological, clinical, environmental, and societal issues related to psychiatry, including planetary mental health. He spearheads several initiatives related to planetary mental health (Lancet Psychiatry Commission on Climate Change and Mental Health), and research into making psychotropic medication use more sustainable.

Dr. Juliette Mattijsen is a physician, activist, and researcher working at the intersection of health and justice affiliated with the University Medical Centre Utrecht. Through her medical practice, she was confronted with the deeply political nature of health, shaped not only by access to care, but by inequality, climate breakdown, and colonial legacies. These experiences led her to focus increasingly on activism, both within and beyond the healthcare sector. Juliette works towards a new narrative on health, engaging with themes such as the social and political determinants of health, the right to self-determination over land and bodies, the decolonisation of medicine, and the building of collective alternatives rooted in care, solidarity, equality, and wellbeing.

Dr. Evelyn Brakema is a GP and post-doctoral researcher on sustainable healthcare at the Leiden University Medical Centre (LUMC), and the co-founder and chair of the Dutch Green Health Alliance (Groene Zorg Alliantie) in the Netherlands, which she helped establish as a grassroots network to mobilise health professionals towards action for planetary health. It is one of the most robust sustainability networks in healthcare, connecting over 250 local and national Green Teams (more than 10,000 health professionals). Now, Evelyn is a national figurehead for the transition to sustainable healthcare in the media and (inter)national events. Evelyn was awarded ‘Sustainability Champion of the Year’ (Health Care Without Harm Europe, 2025).

Dr. Joyce Browne is a medical doctor and epidemiologist dedicated to advancing global maternal health, health equity, planetary health, and fair and sustainable partnerships in global health. Her work connects research, education, and capacity strengthening in high, low, and middle-income countries. She is an Associate Professor of Global Health at the University Medical Center Utrecht, and affiliated with the Faculty of Law, Economics and Governance (REBO) of Utrecht University, The Netherlands.

Dr. George Downward, originally a medical doctor from New Zealand, George now leads the Planetary Health and Exposome team at the University Medical Centre Utrecht. With backgrounds in clinical medicine, global health, and environmental epidemiology, he leads multiple lines of research and education, examining our changing world and how those changes (often unfairly) impact our health. 

Noa Kolpa is an activist and medical student affiliated with the Department of Global Public Health & Bioethics at the University Medical Center Utrecht. Driven by a deep love for nature and the planet, her work and engagement focus on planetary health, mental health, and epistemic justice. Across her studies, teaching activities, and activism, Noa works to challenge dominant knowledge systems and to amplify the voices of those who have been systematically excluded. She is committed to building more just and compassionate forms of care, and to contributing to collective movements that place humanity, connection, and wellbeing, for both people and planet, at their core.