Pre-Conference Events

Monday, May 10, 2010

Promoting Health from the Ground Up - Baltimore Urban Agriculture Tour
12:30 p.m. - 5:30 p.m.
Participants will be picked up at Marriott Inner Harbor - Meet at 12:30 p.m.
Cost: $80
Across the country the healthcare community is exploring means to improve the health of urban communities. Learn exciting ideas around health, food and community benefit through a guided tour of two of the nation’s leading edge Urban Agricultural models.

Real Food Farm www.real-food-farm.org is a new urban agriculture project in Northeast Baltimore's Clifton Park. The Farm is a project of Civic Works Baltimore's Service Corps, and sells fruits, herbs and vegetables to local institutions and communities using hoop-houses, low-cost, plastic greenhouses. Real Food Farm improves community access to organic and wholesome food, increases the percentage of local food consumed by Baltimore City residents, and creates green jobs.

Great Kids Farm at the Bragg Nature Center is a nationally recognized working organic farm owned and operated by the Baltimore City Public Schools as an educational and vocational training component of its larger Farm to Cafeteria initiative. At the farm and through outreach efforts, school students are engaged in all aspects of food from seed to fork. Learn more here.

Join our hosts Tony Geraci, Food Service Director, Baltimore City Public Schools and Great Kids Farm and Tyler Brown, Farm Manager, Real Food Farm for an informative and exciting afternoon.

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Creating a Menu of Change: Healthy Food in Healthcare
8:30 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
Baltimore Marriott Inner Harbor – First Floor, Salon ABC
Cost: $175 (includes lunch following*)
This half-day workshop is designed to help participants learn about the growing demand for sustainable and nutritious healthcare food. Attendees will learn about cost effective procurement strategies that emphasize health concerns that meet the unique needs of health care. Participants will also receive tools and references to help them implement innovative ideas into their food service and dietary programs.

Complete Workshop Agenda

Hospital Energy Management Workshop
9:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
Hyatt Regency Baltimore – Second Floor South, Frederick
Cost: $175 (includes lunch following)
Today, growing numbers of hospitals are seeking to fully leverage energy-saving opportunities in their O&M practices. Energy efficiency and renewable energy are mission-critical investments, enabling hospitals to reduce current operating costs and mitigate the risks of future price volatility. While energy is a small part of a hospital’s total operating budget, it’s a cost center that managers can control — with savings that go right to the bottom line. Returns on energy-saving investments ultimately make more resources available for quality patient care.

Strategies for Greening the Operating Room
9:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
Hyatt Regency Baltimore – Second Floor, Baltimore & Annapolis 
Cost: $175 (includes lunch following)
This pre-conference session will examine best-in-class strategies for reducing the environmental impact of the operating room (OR), along with potential cost-savings and worker safety improvements. The OR has one of the largest environmental footprints of any department across the hospital—generating huge amounts of medical waste, using large volumes of expensive (and often disposable) equipment and materials and requiring energy-intensive technologies that can be improved upon. A follow-up to an innovative Practice Greenhealth Greening the OR Symposium being held in late April, this session will walk through how the selected strategies were implemented at Practice Greenhealth member hospitals and then vetted by different OR stakeholders including perioperative nurses, physicians, engineers and executive-level administrators. Get your questions answered and learn how your hospital can take a leadership role by piloting and implementing these cutting edge technologies and management strategies at your facility.

Eco-Pharmacology: Minimizing Pharmaceutical Waste in Clinical Care
9:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
Hyatt Regency Baltimore – Third Floor, Chesapeake
Cost: $175 (includes lunch following)
Unused and improperly disposed pharmaceuticals are emerging as environmental contaminants in both surface and drinking water. This interactive symposium will present a summary of current ecotoxicological findings and provide information on tools and resources for reducing pharmaceutical waste in clinical care. The program will consist of three presentations by faculty addressing the eco-toxicology of pharmaceuticals, approaches for reducing pharmaceutical waste for physicians and nurses, and advocating for proper pharmaceutical disposal in clinical care.  Lectures will be interspersed with group discussions led by a qualified faculty of physicians and nurses.  Participants will gain valuable skills as well as the opportunity to join the growing collaborative effort to address eco-pharmacological issues.

Climate and Health Literacy
9:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
Hyatt Regency Baltimore – Second Floor, Columbia
Cost: $175 (includes lunch following)
Health professionals are going to be on the front lines of any climate-related disaster, responding to the public health impacts of events around the globe. Overall, the need to treat illness and disease due to climate-related changes in our environment will continue to increase as global warming continues at an accelerated pace. At the same time, the healthcare industry will experience the climate crisis in its own operations, characterized by dramatically increasing energy costs, projected instability in the electric service provision grid, and intensified stressors placed on community health services, especially in times of disaster. It is crucial that the health sector develop a strong, unified voice to reduce the environmental and public health impacts of climate change. Health professionals need to fully understand the science, be able to critically analyze policy options, and express the health benefits of addressing climate change in concise, powerful terms that politicians will hear and act upon. This workshop will serve to educate participants about the science behind global warming, the environmental and health impacts of climate change, mitigation strategies that health care systems can implement to help reduce their emissions, and the work of the Climate and Health Literacy Consortium.

Tour of local Baltimore Facilities: Baltimore Medical System and Health Care for the Homeless
9:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
Participants will be picked up at the Hyatt Regency Baltimore at 9:00 a.m.
Cost: $75 (includes lunch following)
Health Care for the Homeless and Baltimore Medical System have completed LEED-NC Gold and LEED-CI Platinum facilities respectively. As their names imply, Health Care for the Homeless provides health-related services, education, and advocacy to reduce the incidence and burdens of homelessness. Baltimore Medical System is a Community Health Center providing services to an economically distressed urban population. The commitment to provide the best possible health care in the healthiest environments for these at risk communities shows what can be done by committed project teams.

This event will take you to these two newly completed projects for tours of their facilities. You will hear about the challenges and achievements of these exemplary projects and how these institutions are using their platforms to engage frequently marginalized communities in the importance of environmental health. You will see how they met their sustainability goals, discuss how construction costs were managed and learn how these new green facilities are impacting their clients, staff and their entire organizations.