Seema Gandhi is an anesthesiologist and medical director of sustainability at UCSF Health, playing an instrumental role in environmental efforts that make UCSF a leader in sustainable health care. At UCSF, she has engaged colleagues to eliminate desflurane, an anesthetic gas with the highest global warming potential, and spearheaded a multidisciplinary team to implement a clinical decision support tool for the adoption of low flow anesthesia practices to decrease direct emissions of greenhouse gases from the operating room. Ongoing projects include energy utilization and carbon emission mapping for UCSF operating rooms; identifying opportunities for reducing heating, ventilation, and air conditioning energy usage; and creating an operating room equipment shutdown checklist for off-peak hours. Gandhi has presented on health care sustainability and environmental impacts of anesthesia at health care institutions across the country.
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More than 8% of US greenhouse gas emissions originate in the health sector. Recognizing the urgency of change, almost 1,000 hospitals, industry organizations, and trade associ...