Research

About Our Research

Our goal is to create new knowledge in health care sustainability and increase sustainability research funding while fostering collaborations across the University of Pittsburgh.

Ongoing Projects:

• Global LCA of Cesarean Section
• LCA of Disposable Stethoscopes
• Infection rates with reduced draping for cystoscopy
• Eco-Engineering the Future: Sustainable Prosthetics for Sustainable Healthcare
• Incorporating Sustainability Framework in Bioengineering Laboratory Education
• Eat Well & Waste Less: Sustainable Cooking and Composting Education for Health Science Students
• Flipping the Paradigm: Using lessons from a comparative assessment of surgical supply use in high and low resource settings to develop a Green OR pilot at UPMC
• DRDIN-MPS: A Sustainable, Patient-Specific Microphysiology Platform for Diabetes Drug Discovery
• Reducing Lab Plastic Waste through Reuse of ‘Single-Use’ Consumables

Publications

• Green Cystoscopy: Does Minimizing the Use of Drapes Increase Infection rates?
• Waste not want not: the story of surgical trash
• Climate Change as a Social Determinant of Health 
• Do single-use medical devices containing biopolymers reduce the environmental impacts of surgical procedures compared with their plastic equivalents? 
• Environmental impacts of surgical procedures: life cycle assessment of hysterectomy in the United States 
• Environmental Sustainability in Orthopaedic Surgery 
• Going green in gynecology: a call to action 
• Life cycle assessment perspectives on delivering an infant in the US 
• Strategies to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Laparoscopic Surgery 
• Transforming The Medical Device Industry: Road Map to a Circular Economy 
• The Use of Disposable Supplies: Measuring Sub urethral Sling Surgical Waste by Cost and Weight 
• Attitude of US obstetricians and gynecologists to global warming and medical waste 
• Sustainable Healthcare and Environmental Life-Cycle Impacts of Disposable Supplies: A Focus on Disposable Custom Packs 
• Tackling the Massive Threat of Climate Change: How clinicians can – and should – take an active role in matters of environmental justice 
• Evaluating the Impact of Helicopter Transport Interval in Patient Discharge Disposition for Interfacility Transfers With an Eye Toward Sustainability 
• Reducing the carbon footprint of a laparoscopic appendectomy: A life cycle assessment
• Rethinking Inhalers in the Era of Climate Change
• Circular economy systems analysis of high-density polyethylene (HDPE) plastic packaging by informal recycling in Brazil, Global South: Quality assurance, rejects and value appropriation