My Turn: Doctors, midwifes: Baystate getting smarter on climate

We read with great interest, and some relief, the article on the front page of the Aug. 29 Recorder titled “Building resilient hospitals.” As midwives and doctors working at Pioneer Women’s Health and the Birthplace at Baystate Franklin Medical Center, we have noted for years the dismaying increase in the use of materials and systems that purport to make patients and staff safer, but actually endanger us all by contributing to the pollution and overheating of planet Earth.

We are relieved to know that Baystate Health Systems has hired Ariana Walker as sustainability and energy coordinator, and fervently hope that BHS will put its full weight behind her efforts to reduce the hospital’s carbon footprint.

We are eager to work with Ariana. We do not need hospital eating utensils made of plastic and sealed in individual plastic bags. Our uniforms do not need to be dispensed to us in plastic bags by electronic machines. Supplies that cannot be reused or recycled create tons of rubbish that will sit for 100 years in a landfill. Far greater efforts are needed to increase public transportation for patients to access health care appointments.

The list goes on. It is reassuring that Baystate Health Systems now recognizes the dismal fact that our world is burning and flooding due to climate change. No one is coming to rescue us, and only if we act fast will our children and grandchildren, the babies born today at the Birthplace, have a world they can inhabit healthfully.

The health of Earth must be our collective priority. We look forward to hearing the many more ideas our patients and colleagues have for Baystate Franklin Medical Center to help combat the climate crisis — and working with Ariana Walker to put our ideas into practice.

Midwives Cate Kokonowski, Mary Casartello, Anne Kilroy, Vicki Nolan Marnin, Caitlin Miller, Liza Ramlow, Sarit Shatken-Stern, Katie Temes and Dakota Whelpley, and Drs. Timothy J. LePore, Linda Polonsky and Kasey Hebert, at Pioneer Women’s Health and The Birthplace, Baystate Franklin Medical Center, signed this article.