Vancouver Anchor Team Impact Report

Climate Leadership in Canada: Vancouver General Hospital Revamps Food for Planetary Health

Food served in health care settings is often wasted and “neglected as a therapeutic intervention and relegated to a support service.” This collaborative brought together Vancouver General Hospital, UBC Faculty of Medicine’s Planetary Healthcare Lab, along with health care centres, academia, Indigenous groups, local growers, community advocates, and prominent chef Ned Bell, from Chefs for Oceans.

The team strived to take a more holistic view of food in health settings, acknowledging food not only as an economic good, but recognizing its power as “a source of nourishment, cultural identity, dignity, and a link to nature” along the continuum of care. With this perspective, meals can reflect diverse cultures and sustainability, and in so doing, “improve patient nutrition, experience, and equity while mitigating global climate change.” Health care practitioners could also take into account food insecurity in home environments, and factor in its impact on wellbeing.

With a mandate from Vice President, Strategy, Innovation and Planetary Health, Darcia Pope, and the leadership from surgeon Dr. Andrea McNeill, this collaborative built up their “role as an anchor institution within British Columbia to create health and wellness for our communities, and to search for innovative, intersectional approaches to the wicked problems posed by a changing climate, COVID-19, health and social inequity, and our social and economic history.”

Reach:
This team involved several sites, including Vancouver General, a large urban hospital with 700+ acute care beds serving a population of ~1.25 million residents. With partners across the city, as well as the UBC Faculty of Medicine, this team was poised to influence the way health care approaches food, from medical school students to food services workers.

The Vancouver Team Worked On:
1) Encouraging plant-based meals for hospital staff, beginning with resident physicians, who are unable to access healthy foods at VGH after hours (between 7 pm-7 am)

2) Making plant-rich meal options more prevalent in monthly staff lunches

3) Piloting more sustainable and culturally-relevant meal options for inpatients

4) Introducing behavioural nudges toward plant-rich meals as the default in the VGH cafeteria

5) Expanding traditional food options for Indigenous patients in acute and long-term care settings, starting with building community engagement and partnerships

6) Building awareness and educating VCH staff on planetary health and the role of food in VCH’s planetary health strategy

7) Establishing sustainable health care food service infrastructure guidelines for new builds and renovations (in development)

Read the final Vancouver Anchor Team Impact Report here.