Meeting the public health challenge of climate change

By Michael Cohen

Public health is inexorably linked to the environment. From the growing range of neglected tropical diseases spreading around the globe to the impact of extreme heat and violent storms, the toll on human health wrought by climate change is well documented. As the commonwealth’s only public medical school, UMass Chan Medical School is working to safeguard the health of the campus and the communities that surround it.

As part of the institution’s strategic planning, sustainability programs across the Medical School continue to grow and include initiatives such as planting native perennials that support pollinators, decarbonization projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions and educating the next generation of physicians about the public health impact of climate change.

Envisioning a carbon neutral future

In 2021, Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker issued the executive order “Decarbonizing and Minimizing Environmental Impacts of State Government” that established a statewide goal of achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Guided by this order and coinciding with the Earth Month celebration in April, UMass Chan released its long-term sustainability strategic plan to dramatically reduce its use of fossil fuels.

“This is a vital issue,” said David Flanagan, deputy executive vice chancellor of facilities management. “Our strategy will be to increase efficiency and adopt new technology in generation, distribution and energy recovery systems, while never losing sight of the need for resiliency.”

Originally built in the 1970s, the Medical School’s power plant has been a source of strength and stability, providing virtually uninterrupted electricity, steam and chilled water to sustain the health care, educational and research operations on the Worcester campus. Today, while updated and burning primarily natural gas, the power plant is the school’s biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions.

In the fall of 2022 as UMass Chan sought to determine the carbon footprint of the Worcester campus, it partnered with ARUP, a global professional services firm with significant expertise in energy modeling and sustainability, to develop a detailed decarbonization plan.

Working closely with campus facilities management staff and a community task force of faculty and students, ARUP engineers assessed the campus carbon footprint and estimated the hour-by-hour demand for heating, cooling and electricity for every building on campus for an entire year.

The team evaluated all existing mechanical systems and operating procedures on campus and proposed a comprehensive list of initiatives to improve efficiency and reduce reliance on fossil fuels.

The result is a five-phase, 20-year road map with options to consider for mechanical system upgrades, adding renewable energy generation like solar arrays and geothermal systems, and eventually considering new fuel options for the campus power plant.

“We need to achieve carbon neutrality while maintaining uninterrupted operational continuity for UMass Memorial Medical Center’s patients and the Medical School’s ongoing education and research enterprises,” Flanagan said.

Driving for Change

Beyond the power plant, another significant source of greenhouse gas emissions attributed to UMass Chan comes from gasoline-burning vehicles used by people driving to campus. To address that issue, the Medical School regularly promotes carpooling and public transportation options, and continues to invest in electric vehicle charging capacity.

“We have a rapidly growing EV community,” said Kortni Wroten, sustainability and energy manager at UMass Chan. “So, we are actively engaging with EV owners to support our shared goals of increasing EV ridership and maximizing the number of electric vehicles able to charge on campus.”

The campus has 92 EV charging spots for faculty, staff, students and UMass Memorial Medical Center patients and visitors and there are plans to add more in the coming year.

Hoping to increase the number of EV drivers who commute to campus, the Medical School hosted its second EV “Ride and Drive” event, co-organized by Recharge Massachusetts, a nonprofit public/private partnership sponsored by the state’s Department of Environmental Protection and the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs. More than 200 people attended, taking test rides in electric vehicles and trying an electric bicycle.

There are 197 registered EV drivers at UMass Chan. In 2023, the total hours those drivers charged while on campus was the equivalent of burning 30,146 gallons of gasoline in an internal combustion vehicle. That translates to greenhouse gas savings equal to the carbon sequestered from 25,231 trees grown for 10 years.

Training the next generation of physicians

As UMass Chan is working to protect the physical environment of the campus and surrounding communities, understanding the health consequences of climate change is being integrated into the T.H. Chan School of Medicine curriculum.

“We are experiencing the adverse health effects of climate change expanding and impacting all physiological systems,” said Manas Das, MD, MS, associate dean of undergraduate medical education at UMass Chan. “We are threading content related to the effects of climate change on health and disease across all four years of our curriculum.”

Dr. Das organized a task force of faculty and students to develop climate-change curriculum content and facilitate its implementation as an evolving element of the T.H. Chan School of Medicine’s Vista curriculum.

“We are reaching out to leaders of specific courses and clerkships, providing resources, inquiring about current coverage and working with them to integrate this content further,” Das said. “As a sub-domain of the societal forces in health and disease focus topic in Vista, this will be required curriculum, through all four years.”

Medical students have helped drive the climate agenda on campus, Das noted. Since 2021, a volunteer group of students has participated in the Planetary Health Report Card initiative, which was launched in 2019 by students at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine.

The report card was conceived as an advocacy tool to prompt medical schools and affiliated health professions schools to educate the next generation of clinicians about the public health impacts of climate change so they are better able to care for their patients.

“The faculty has been very receptive,” said medical student Amos Armony, a member of the curriculum task force and a leader on the report card effort. “There are a lot of students here working very hard on this issue. I think our generation is more focused on climate change because it will affect all of us and our patients, so the push has to come from the people whose future we are fighting for.”

Planting seeds of change

Also new this year, UMass Chan is building its first Wellness Farm, a 40-foot hydroponic farm that can produce up to three tons of produce each year. Located near the school’s Office of Well-Being in Anderson House on Plantation Street, the farm is funded by a
$420,000 Food Security Infrastructure Grant from the state’s Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs.

The hydroponic farm will support nearly 13,000 plants and will use fewer than five gallons of water each day. It will be the first site on UMass Chan’s campus to include an onsite solar array, which will be installed on Anderson House to help offset the farm’s power demand.

“The freight farm—so called because it is built inside a shipping container—aligns with key elements of our sustainability and climate action plan, as it relates to food systems and supports our energy goals,” said Suzanne Wood, associate director of sustainability and campus services at UMass Chan.

The farm is expected to be staffed for 20 hours a week by UMass Chan volunteers and local high school students through a partnership with 2GetherWeEat. The harvest will be divided between the Max Baker Resource Center food pantry for students at UMass Chan and food pantries at the Worcester public schools in the North Quadrant that are supported by UMass Chan, as well as with other community members facing food insecurity.

Additionally, thanks to the initiative of a group of students, faculty and staff who formed a planning committee called Pollination Association, UMass Chan is now a certified pollinator campus. The first formal pollinator garden will be built this year on the hill below the power plant facing Lake Quinsigamond.

Students have also taken the lead in establishing and maintaining a community garden on campus, with the produce harvested going to the Max Baker Resource Center.

Building sustainability into growth

UMass Chan has had a formal sustainability program since 2004, focused on the built environment, operating processes and community awareness to encourage people to make more sustainable choices in their daily lives, on campus and at home.

For example, plumbing retrofitting projects have helped reduce the annual usage of potable water by 23 million gallons. Electrical consumption has been reduced by LED lighting upgrade projects, replacing thousands of bulbs and fixtures across the campus. LED fixtures consume 40 to 60 percent less energy than legacy fluorescent or incandescent lighting.

Occupancy sensors are now the standard for lighting, heating and cooling of offices and conference rooms. Heat recovery wheels in several buildings allow fresh air exchange while retaining most of the heat in the building. Variable speed fans, with sash sensors, on the fume hoods in the laboratories also save energy.

In 2012, a high-efficiency gas-fired turbine and an associated heat recovery system was added to the campus power plant. Since natural gas burns more cleanly and offers added energy capacity compared to oil, its use is an important step forward in lowering greenhouse gas emissions from the plant and toward decarbonization.

Because of projects like these, even though the campus has grown significantly in the past 15 years, energy use per-square-foot of building space has dropped almost 30 percent.

“I think it is a really important message to say that sustainability and sustainable elements don't have to be exclusive of research or clinical care,” Wood said. “We have shown that we can develop smart buildings, with high energy efficiency to support our research needs, while still making progress on decarbonization and reducing our impact on the environment.” ■