FORBES | Healthcare systems undertake a fundamental and challenging mission: keeping us healthy. But true health and wellbeing extends beyond hospital walls and examination rooms. Our bodies and minds, after all, can only be as healthy as the environments that nourish them.  

 It should go without saying then that what is bad for our environment — or planet — is equally bad for our health. Sure, loss of nature and biodiversity, upticks in pollution, and poor stewardship of our farmlands all have a direct impact on the natural, wondrous world around us. But our individual, human health is paying the price, too.

As a physician, I took an oath to do no harm. As a policy maker in Washington, I honored this oath through my focus on healthcare systems and global health. And now as a voice for nature and health in my role as Chair of the Global Board of The Nature Conservancy, I’ve begun to more closely examine that intersection between the health of our bodies and the health of our natural world, as well as the larger, more direct impact broader industries like the healthcare sector are having on our environment.

Read more at Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/billfrist/2023/01/30/healthcare-paradox-how-the-industry-designed-to-keep-us-well-is-also-making-our-planet–and-our-bodies–sick/?sh=3df7c20c35d7