Webinar: Prof. Paula Williamson - Decarbonising the healthcare, social care and research systems: How can trials methodologists contribute?

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Healthcare contributes ~4-5% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Initiatives are underway to de-carbonise healthcare, including clinical trials. This talk will highlight some of those initiatives. Studies designed to assess the effects of healthcare interventions on greenhouse emissions alongside patient outcomes and costs have been found to be poor in several respects. Evidence suggests environmental impact assessments are beginning to be included in RCT protocols. Work on SPIRIT-ICE and CONSORT-ICE extensions to address environmental impacts is a welcome development. Many trials methodologists are unfamiliar with the concept of carbon footprinting yet their work to improve how we design, run and analyse studies is highly relevant. Following previous work to develop and test a method and guidance to calculate the carbon footprint of clinical trials, our focus is now on ways to: more rapidly gather the data required to identify carbon hotspots; identify mitigation strategies and research gaps; and promote behaviour change.

Speaker:

Paula Williamson is Professor of Medical Statistics at the University of Liverpool. Her research programme has focussed on several aspects of evidence-based medicine (EBM) including clinical trials, meta-analysis, health outcome selection, and reducing waste in research. She was appointed as an NIHR Senior Investigator in 2014, gave the Bradford Hill Lecture in 2017, and was elected Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (AMS) in 2018. More recently, as a trials methodologist Paula has developed research interests in two aspects of environmental sustainability in healthcare: how to evaluate the environmental impact of healthcare interventions; and how to reduce the carbon footprint of clinical trials. She is the Academy of Medical Sciences Programme Lead for the International Policy Project ‘Exploring Climate Change and Health with the Next Generation of Research Leaders’, and a member of the MRC-NIHR TMRP Greener Trials Group.