Good Jobs, Green Jobs sponsor Kaiser Permanente made headlines this week by stating climate change will “impact our ability to provide quality health care.”

We have been proud that Kaiser Permanente has chosen to sponsor the Good Jobs, Green Jobs conference for the past three years. During our Western Conference this year, Kathy Gerwig, Kaiser Permanente’s Environmental Stewardship Officer, spoke about Kaiser’s efforts to create the Healthier Hospitals Initiative among health care industries.

“At Kaiser Permanente, we are working with other large healthcare systems to create the Healthier Hospitals Initiative in order to say we need safety for workers, safety for patients and environmental sustainability… If we all agree to only buy products that are free of harmful chemicals, and it accounts many billions of dollars, that not only changes what’s available in the healthcare industry, it expands to other industries. That’s part of what needs to happen: coalition building.”

See what else Kathy had to see by watching the “Western Strategies for Building Sustainable Jobs and Communities” plenary panel below or on YouTube.