Seeking advice on creating a green education curriculum

I'm not palliative care to know if there's specific education pointers (is there a palliative care network to cross post to?), but in general, considering the 'driver diagram' on SusQI website - ie reduce GHG emission and improved value healthcare through reducing activity (prevention, self care/empowerment/digital solutions ) and reducing impact (low carbon alternatives, lean systems, resource stewardship, realistic medicine). https://www.susqi.org/resources

It's an interesting questions, and not something I've come across specific guidance on but made me think of this:
A colleague shared with me a picture of some simulation they were doing for teaching medical students venepuncture skills and they were using a green liquid in the model veins because (it said on a card attached to the model) the red dyes traditionally used are toxic to algae growth and can harm marine ecosystems.
Perhaps there is a need to bring all these type of nuggets together?

Hi Louise,
I’m piloting a green prescribing workshop for cancer rehabilitation in the UK and EU. It’s a different journey, but it has helped me identify a process that may be useful here.

I think the starting point is finding the story you need to tell—one that captures key common messages, bridges gaps in different audiences’ motivations to engage with each other, and connects with the language they already use. This can reveal common priorities that are otherwise hidden. Getting there requires quite a lot of reconnaissance and interviewing because different professional groups often describe the same issues very differently and may not realise they are interested in the same outcomes.

My starting point has therefore been stakeholder mapping to identify common ground: understanding the policy priorities driving different groups, what those priorities look like in practice, and where they intersect across professional and social groups.

I’m currently developing something that needs to resonate with a very mixed audience—clinicians, volunteer gardeners, commissioners, etc. I’ve spent considerable time unpicking the initial materials and thinking about what is likely to land with each audience. The resources I was given explain the what and why of green prescribing, but don’t sufficiently explore what it looks like for different audiences or, importantly, why they would want to adopt it.

So I think it’s worth doing some detailed scoping of the agendas driving different groups in your specific palliative-care context and identifying the intersections. For example: how might we better manage pain and reduce side effects for patients while also supporting environmental sustainability?

As a worked example, I interviewed endocrinologists and some high-profile oncologists and uncovered a substantial body of evidence around the tremendous value of vitamin D in prehabilitation, treatment, management and recovery. This potentially offered a solution to concerns that mattered to several groups.

One possible connection is that sensible sun exposure is a natural source of vitamin D, while vitamin D depletion is widespread in the UK. That creates a potential route into a conversation about green prescribing for some audiences. You can then explore scenarios around vitamin D, radiotherapy, treatment toxicity, supplementation and sustainability—without telling people what conclusion to reach.

The point is to surface scenarios and connections that are often hidden in plain sight. Rather than telling people what to think, create a learning environment where they can see how green prescribing might address priorities they already care about.

That suggests an approach grounded in andragogy and adult-learning principles: start with the problems, priorities and experience of the learners, make the relevance explicit, and use real-world scenarios to help them identify connections and solutions themselves.
Hope this stream of consciousness is helpful. Jo