Welcome to Green Stroke Care Network!
Over 100,000 strokes occur each year in the UK with an estimated annual financial cost of £26 billion; the associated resource use contributes to the carbon footprint of the NHS and therefore to the climate crisis.
People with cardiovascular risk factors including stroke survivors are more vulnerable to the health impacts of climate change, for example during heatwaves, yet many of the actions needed to address the climate crisis, such as promoting active transport and more sustainable diets, have health co-benefits that could reduce stroke risk.
How can we reduce the environmental impact of stroke care while maintaining the highest clinical standards?
Please post ideas, questions, experience, resources to help make the change to greener, more sustainable, stroke care.
We should approach this systematically and perhaps think of looking deeper into our clinical pathways and collect more data to help us understand the top areas that could be changed without much safety or outcome impact. There are bigger areas to worry about (eg: procurement) which is often addressed at a trust level.
The NHS net zero report is a good place to start for thinking about hotspots, and process mapping our clinical pathways (e.g. TIA) using the SusQI framework would be really helpful - I imagine pathways vary between trusts with different obstacles and opportunities.
https://www.england.nhs.uk/greenernhs/a-net-zero-nhs/
https://www.susqi.org/study-the-system
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