SAGES President, Dr. Patricia Sylla, has established a new Sustainability in Surgical Practices Task Force (SSP) for her presidential year, chaired by Dr. Shaneeta Johnson and cochaired by Dr. Adnan Alseidi, in collaboration with our European sister society EAES.
The goals of the SSP Task Force are as follows:
- To inform surgeons of the direct and indirect environmental impact of surgical practices and review industry standards used to measure the environmental impact of healthcare-related activities and adapt to create a set of validated metrics to measure the impact of surgical/MIS activities.
- To establish multidisciplinary collaborations and partnerships in order to reach a consensus on a set of standardized metrics that will accurately capture the environmental footprint and health impact of surgical/MIS activities.
- To educate our members of the surgical community and beyond on best practices to reduce the carbon footprint within the field of MIS, including how to implement the above metrics to quantify individual, practice-specific, procedure-specific, and institutional environmental footprints and develop strategies to automate/streamline these processes.
If you have an interest or expertise in this subject and would like to join the task force, please submit a brief paragraph below explaining your background, experience and interest in sustainability no later than June 30th.
We will notify those selected for the task force in mid-to-late July.