Sustainable health: EHESP French School of Public Health secures €7.9 million in Horizon Europe funding to coordinate the GREEN-CARE research project

The GREEN-CARE project – “Greening Healthcare Decision-Making and Care Pathways through Environmental Impact Integration and its Application in Oncology” – has secured four years’ funding from the European Union under the Horizon Europe programme. Coordinated by Laurie Marrauld – a senior lecturer in management sciences at EHESP (IDM department – Arènes UMR 6051, RSMS Team) and holder of the research chair RESPECT– this large-scale research project will begin in early 2027 and will involve a consortium of European and American researchers*. The aim of GREEN-CARE is to develop and test methods for integrating environmental impacts into the assessment, organisation and delivery of care, with a primary focus on oncology. By bringing together environmental research, public health, medicine, health economics, health technology assessment, biostatistics, social sciences and digital innovation, this pioneering project aims to contribute to European health systems that are more sustainable, more resilient and ever more focused on patients’ needs.

GREEN-CARE: a pioneering research project to integrate environmental considerations into healthcare decision-making

Although the environmental impact of healthcare activities is now identified and estimated, this information is still rarely used in decision-making. How can it be used to make better healthcare decisions? This is the challenge that GREEN-CARE aims to address by developing a new methodological framework to measure the environmental impacts of interventions and care pathways, and then to consider them alongside their health and economic benefits.

EHESP as a scientific and operational coordinator for a project with a European impact

Under the scientific and operational coordination of EHESP – which works to produce knowledge, transform organisations and provide training, and is already conducting research into the links between the environment, health and the resilience of health systems (link to the RESPECT Chair webpage?) – international partner teams from the fields of public health, medicine, oncology, environmental sciences, health economics, health technology assessment, statistics and social sciences will be tasked with moving from measuring the environmental footprint to building a genuine capacity for action.

How? By providing healthcare professionals, institutions, evaluation bodies and decision-makers with methods, indicators and decision-support tools that can be reused through:

• the production of more than 15 scientific publications;
• the presentation of results at major international conferences on oncology, radiotherapy, health technology assessment and health economics;
• training more than 200 professionals and participants;
• providing a knowledge platform bringing together the methods, data, tools and resources produced by the consortium, which can be reused beyond the scope of the project.

Based on the scientific research results obtained, the GREEN-CARE project aims to contribute to the sustainable development of European healthcare systems: providing better care, while learning to take greater account of the natural resources and environmental impacts involved in delivering that care.

*(FR) Institut Européen De La Transition Ecologique En Santé – Inserm – Institut Curie – Ecovamed – Cureety Sas – Hospices Civils De Lyon – The Shift Project ; (BE) Universite Catholique De Louvain – Cancer Patients Europe – European Society For Radiotherapy And Oncology – Belgian Society For Radiotherapy And Oncology; (NL) Stichting Radboud Universiteit, Stichting Radboud Universitair Medisch Centrum ; (US) Bentley University ; (PT) Instituto De Saude Publica Da Universidade Do Porto ; (DK) Kobenhavns Universitet, Copenhagen Trial Unit – Centre For Clinical Intervention Research – Region Syddanmark.