by Hannah Paul

Hi again!

Just as a quick disclaimer, I’m definitely using this blog as an opportunity to educate myself along with others, so please know I am no expert in the field, nor is any of the information I provide a comprehensive overview of the subjects I address! But I still hope they’re interesting and informative for you all! :)

As aspiring healthcare professionals, we have all vowed to live by the statement of “Do No Harm.” While we strive to uphold this pledge in every aspect of our work, we must also protect human health by minimizing the climate impacts of our higher education institutions and our healthcare sector. In 2005, higher education institutions accounted for 2% of national greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In 2013, the U.S. healthcare industry accounted for 9-10% of total national GHG emissions. Based on these numbers, together, they constitute around 11-12% of the country’s emissions. To meet the goal of carbon neutrality, we must push for our education and healthcare institutions to reduce that footprint.

To expand on the impact of higher education, I figured I could let you all know what the CU Auraria and Anschutz campuses are doing to address their ecological footprint. Below is a brief list of 10 current efforts, but if you’re just dying for more information, it can all be found here on the UC Denver website.

1. The university is a member of the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) and you can use your university email to access all their resources!

2. In 2010, a Climate Action Plan was developed to establish a goal of reducing GHG emissions by 80% by 2050. According to the 2019 update, the university has already reduced emissions by 38% since 2006, putting us ahead of schedule!

3. It has succeeded in reducing its Energy Use Index by 48% through the construction of 7 LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Certified buildings – including our dental school - and investment in facility optimization projects for many of its older buildings.

4. A contract with Waste Management allows for the recycling of certain plastics, glass, aluminum, and paper waste - I’m sure you’ve all used the receptacles on campus! Also, a specialized program through Alpine Recycling enables collection of a variety of research lab materials.

5. As of 2012 (seems it needs updating) we have a Silver rating in the self-reported Sustainability Tracking, Assessment, and Rating Systems (STARS). That is the third best ranking after Platinum and Gold, so we definitely have room for improvement!

6. There are currently 55 electric vehicle charging stations installed at Anschutz, as well as 5 parking spaces for the utilization of a car sharing network called Zipcar.

7. These Anschutz campus organizations dedicate part or all of their efforts to sustainability:

• Gold Humanism Honor Society | School of Medicine

• CU Consortium on Climate Change and Health

• CU-Climate and Health Advocacy, Sustainability, and Education (@CUCHASE)

• AMC Student Health Promotion Committee

8. The university offers a number of programs and courses with a sustainability focus in six of its schools and colleges.

9. The Auraria Sustainable Campus Program works to reduce the ecological footprint of the Auraria campus through efforts focused on 7 pillars of Alternative Transport, Education and Outreach, Energy Efficiency, Food and Gardens, Renewable Energy, Water Conservation, and Waste Diversion.

10. The President’s Sustainable Solutions Challenge – I know we’re already crazy busy…but…IF any of you have an innovative sustainability idea for CU, this is your chance to propose it! This challenge was supposed to align with Earth Day’s 50th anniversary this past April but, due to COVID-19, it has been postponed to next Spring! Winner gets up to $3,000 in cash.

And if you’d like to learn about the commitments of other universities, check out:

• collegeconsensus.com/rankings/best-green-universities/

• secondnature.org

• saveonenergy.com/learning-center/post/top-green-universities/

• bestcollegereviews.org/top/green-colleges/

My goal for the next post is to explore sustainable efforts in the healthcare sector, so we’ll see what I come up with! Thanks for reading y’all!

by Hannah Paul

Hey CU ASDA!

Congrats on finishing another semester of dental school, and good luck with the next! With exams in our past (for a brief moment) I wanted to start up a little blog feed focused on various sustainability topics to fit into the Sustainability section of ASDA Health and Wellness. As you can see, I’ll be calling it Sustainability Sunday (because it’s cheesy and I like alliteration) and will do my best to submit a new post every week (maybe every two weeks, we’ll see how this goes), so I hope you guys enjoy them! I’ll try to keep them short and sweet. This is the first time I’ve ever done a blog post, so bear with me as I figure it out… This week, to start it off, I’ll give a brief overview of the concept of sustainability and a quick action item at the end.

So... what is Sustainability?

We typically think of sustainability as responsible resource use that allows the environment to remain in a balanced state. As the idea has gained more traction in recent years, what it means for society has been expanded upon and interpreted in several ways.

The 1987 United Nations Brundtland Commission Report - Our Common Future:

In a move to gather the world’s nations in a collective effort to recognize and address environmental degradation, this report was the first to officially define sustainable development as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” This emphasized the importance of looking forward and considering the impacts of today’s consumption patterns on the lives of people tomorrow.

 The Triple Bottom Line: People, Planet, and Profit

Coined by British entrepreneur John Elkington in 1994, the term Triple Bottom Line further describes sustainable development, placing it within the intersection of society, the economy, and the environment. Each sector is dependent upon the other and sustainability cannot be achieved without fully accounting for them all.

dunedingov.com

Nested Sustainability Framework (Future Oxford):

This adaptation of sustainability created by Future Oxford in 2015 depicts the economy as a social construct nested within the human community, which is itself a part of the natural environment. Therefore, the environment sustains the human community which then sustains the economy - the big emphasis here being that the environment is the foundation of it all.

burlingtongreen.org

UN Sustainable Development Goals

Link to photo

With sustainability as the ultimate target, the United Nations General Assembly met in 2015 to establish 17 objectives to address the major challenges we currently face world-wide. With the aim of fulfilling them by the year 2030 the UN called for action on a global, local, and individual scale. For the past next 10 years, the focus will be on addressing poverty, empowerment of women, and the climate emergency. The number and diversity of these 17 goals goes to show just how much is involved in sustainability, and how developing solutions can often be quite complicated. Visit their website below and click on the photos to learn about each specific goal!

About the Sustainable Development Goals

And, if you want to take some easy action locally:

Anschutz Campus Composting Petition

CU – Climate and Health Advocacy, Sustainability, and Education (CHASE) and Student Health Promotion Committee are pushing to bring composting to the Anschutz Campus, and we would love to have your support in this! If you’d like to see this happen, please sign the Anschutz Campus Composting Petition here!

I hope this quick intro was at least slightly helpful and informative for y’all! Please feel free to reach out to me at hannah.paul@cuanschutz.edu if you have questions, concerns, or want to hear about a specific sustainability topic in a future post!

Thank you!

by Sierra Rose

My summer was spent a little unconventionally. I took my NBDE part one exam, packed, and flew out of Denver that night at 3am to a little island in the Pacific: Maui, Hawaii. What on earth was I doing there alone and why wasn’t I sleeping, hanging out with family, or enjoying the few blissful weeks of no assignments and studying we are given between DS1 and DS2 year? I was switching to a whole new set of textbooks and concepts; I was training to become an internationally certified yoga teacher.

I enjoy being a contradiction. I find balance in maintaining my responsibilities as a dental student and a commissioned officer in the US Air Force while also being a free-minded yogi. I create yin and yang in my life and choose to embrace both extremes instead of choosing one over the other. In my world of black and white, right and wrong, and rigid rules, yoga flows freely and obeys nobody and nothing. It is my ironic anchor in a society that tends to be quite the opposite of zen.

Yoga is one of my passions, and I am a firm believer that a hobby is not a passion unless you are able to share it with others. Naturally, I felt called to become a teacher. My motivation to take on this adventure in the middle of dental school stemmed not only from the desire to share something I love with others, but to reach an audience that doesn’t always take the time to address their own physical and mental health: rising medical professionals.

ASDA’s outing to Yoga on The Rocks that I coordinated in June!

Over the course of 16 days I spent tent-camping in the jungle, I danced in the rain and underneath rainbows, meditated on cliffsides, was blessed by a monk, swam in the ocean with sea turtles, watched the most incredible sunsets from craters in Haleakala National Park, spoke deeply with my newfound family members that came from all around the world, and learned a lot about myself, people, and of course, yoga.

Since my return to the ‘normal’ grind of dental school life on the US mainland, I’ve realized that my definition of yoga has expanded from what it used to be before I got on that 3am flight. Last month, I had the opportunity to teach a sunrise class to Colorado ASDA students and was amazed at the turnout despite many of us having exams and patients and stressors pulling us in every which direction. Yoga teaches us that amidst the bustle of whatever goes on in our days spent in clinic and the classroom, peace can be found within us. It gives us a non-judgmental community, a place of acceptance, a challenge when we ask for it, and a teacher of life when we don’t always ask for it but definitely need it. Asanas (poses) are only a small fraction of the equation.

As a yoga instructor and future dental professional, I aim to combine elements of both eastern and western medical approaches to encourage optimal health and wellness of my patients, fellow airmen, and my medical colleagues. I practice karma yoga; I do it for the good of others with the knowledge that when a wave is started, a ripple follows that is able to touch much more people than I am able to dream of reaching alone. I am fueled by my passions of dentistry and yoga to attack each day as a gentler, kinder, stronger person that is equipped to handle whatever challenges come my way and live to serve others, whether that be on the mat or in the clinic chair.

About The Author

Sierra Rose is currently a second year dental student at CU School of Dental Medicine from Marco Island, Florida. She is also 2LT in the United States Air Force and is excited to enter service as a military dentist after graduation. Driven by her passions for health, wellness, balance, and fun in dental school, she proudly serves as the Colorado ASDA Health and Wellness chairwoman. In her spare time, Sierra enjoys playing the guitar, yoga, and getting lost in the Rocky Mountains.