London Anchor Team Impact Report

Growing Health Care Climate Leadership from the Ground Up: St. Joseph’s Health Care London Reduces Food Waste & Improves Patient Experience with Local Ingredients & Enhanced Meal Choice

Food services in health care can have a big environmental footprint, but the team from St. Joseph’s Health Care London and ReForest London sees potential for food to be part of the solution. Instead of being limited by traditional criteria such as cost, clinical requirements, and operational parameters, this team explored how to integrate more sustainable practices such as local procurement, preparation on site, and reducing and repurposing food overages. They also strive to increasingly implement a holistic perspective, looking at how food is medicine and the land is a stakeholder. Their vision is nothing short of providing food which “nourishes patients, body, mind, and spirit.”

According to this team, “COVID-19 allowed us to re-examine our assumptions about patient perspectives surrounding interest in choice and preference and its impact on our model of care, including levels of food waste.” With a mandate from Lori Higgs, Vice President Clinical Support & Chief Financial Officer of St. Joseph’s Health Care London, this team is part of St. Joseph’s commitment to innovate and “to be active partners in building regional coalitions for health equity in a compassionate and kind way, with a goal of closing gaps in care.”

Potential reach:
Working in a large urban health centre with 1,052 acute and long-term health beds across 5 sites, and serving a population of ~9 million residents, innovations from the London team have the potential to be scaled across the city. This team also brought together executive support and partnerships that can influence policy change to support reducing food waste, implementing gardens, and using values-based procurement.

The London Team Worked On:
1) Offering a room service style option for meal selection to decrease food waste and improve customer service

2) Increasing the purchase of local ingredients

3) Piloting a garden on hospital grounds to produce vegetables for food services

4) Implementing composting across all sites

Read the final London Impact Report here.