Preventative Medicine for the Environment: Developing and Implementing Environmental Programs that Work

The goal of this paper is to suggest steps in moving from the theoretical aspects of why healthcare facilities should adopt green principles to how to do it. This paper has three primary objectives: to provide an overview of the planning and implementation of a comprehensive environmental program including basic waste management considerations and cost-benefit analysis, to suggest the necessary conditions that must be adopted to institutionalize sustainable programs and, finally, to provide specific examples of practical and cost-effective programs to suggest the broad applicability of these programs across the entire sector.