The Value(s) of Disposability in Health Care: Questioning the Trade-Offs of Safety, Efficacy, Efficiency, and Sustainability

Description

Roughly 80% of health care's oversized carbon footprint derives from the production, transportation, use, and disposal of a single-use medical supply chain. Yet as health care organizations try to practice 'resource stewardship'—that is, to move away from single-use disposable items toward sustainable use of durable items—they encounter widespread perceptions that disposability is a necessary virtue in modern health care. Caregivers, patients, and health-system managers fear that any move from disposability to sustainability must lead to trade-offs in safety (from infectious threats), efficacy (in pharmaceutical delivery), or efficiency (in cost-effectiveness).

This Berman Institute of Bioethics symposium will question these perceived trade-offs, disentangling legitimate evidential and moral reasoning from the inertia of convenience. Convening scholars and practitioners in bioethics, clinical practice, environmental justice, practice innovation, and health policy, the symposium aims to host a multi-disciplinary exploration of how to elucidate policy pathways that harmonize clinical safety, efficacy, and efficiency with sustainability.