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Highland partnership highly commended in medical awards for environmental work


By Alan Hendry

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Scotland's health secretary Jeane Freeman and local MSP Gail Ross with representatives from the NHS and the Environmental Research Institute who were involved in securing the Alliance for Water Stewardship standard. The picture was taken in the early part of 2020, before the Covid-19 crisis.
Scotland's health secretary Jeane Freeman and local MSP Gail Ross with representatives from the NHS and the Environmental Research Institute who were involved in securing the Alliance for Water Stewardship standard. The picture was taken in the early part of 2020, before the Covid-19 crisis.

An innovative partnership which includes the Environmental Research Institute in Thurso has been highly commended in the UK’s leading medical awards.

The One Health Breakthrough Partnership (OHBP) – involving NHS Highland, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency, Scottish Water, Highlands and Islands Enterprise and the James Hutton Institute, as well as UHI’s Environmental Research Institute – received the recognition in the environmental sustainability and climate action category of the British Medical Journal (BMJ) Healthcare Awards 2020.

The BMJ awards are now in their 12th year. They seek to "promote excellence in healthcare and recognise the inspirational work of healthcare teams across the country", and received more than 350 nominations across 14 categories.

The OHBP is tackling the environmental impact of healthcare activities including the risk to water pollution from the use of medicines.

The OHBP partners recognised that pharmaceutical pollution is an emerging problem and that no single agency could address this challenge in isolation. The partners identified joint and multidisciplinary approaches on upstream interventions and technological solutions to improve water stewardship.

This included working with the NHS to achieve the Alliance for Water Stewardship standard. Work with Caithness General Hospital in Wick resulted in it becoming the first hospital in the world to receive the standard, recognising NHS Highland’s social responsibility for sustainable healthcare and protecting the environment.

Sharon Pfleger, consultant in pharmaceutical public health at NHS Highland, said: “We are really proud to have had our work highly commended at the BMJ awards. We are working hard to improve the NHS’s social responsibility around water and the environment, reducing the impact of pharmaceuticals on the environment while improving the health of our population.

"Eventually we hope to spread our work across the world to help heal our planet as well.”

Stuart Gibb, UHI vice-principal and director of the Environmental Research Institute, said: “This recognition underlines the value of partnership working toward addressing complex issues that cut across organisational and disciplinary boundaries. It also given us confidence that good healthcare and environmental stewardship can be practised and promoted together."

The partnership has just secured funding from the water industry division of the Scottish Government to ensure that it can further develop work in seeking to reduce environmental impact of pharmaceuticals.


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