Finding a new niche in healthcare sustainability

Kristin Sako had a number of experiences after completing her bachelor’s degree in neuroscience. She considered becoming a dentist, but decided it was not for her. She worked as a medical scribe in a hospital. She got her hands dirty doing habitat restoration along the Mississippi River. 

Working in both a hospital and a dental office had shown her how much waste was built into medical processes. The one-way “take-make-waste” process bothered her. 

Doing habitat restoration and conservation with a crew of teenagers was much more satisfying, but it seemed so far from what she had studied to become. 

“That work was a lot dirtier and physically harder but I was so much happier, even when it was 100 degrees,” Sako says. “There was one thing that tied these experiences together—healthcare sustainability.”

Sako recently completed  the Master of Science in Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy (MS–STEP) program at the U of M’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs. It’s one of the leading such programs in the nation, preparing students to integrate science with policy to solve grand challenges like these.

“It’s meant for people like me, with no background in policy, no industry experience, no experience in nonprofits,” Sako says. “It’s great for people who are transitioning in or out of a life sciences career. It’s a pivot. That’s why I’m really glad I went to this school. For me, it’s been perfect.”

Healthcare sustainability: A new field of expertise

According to one study, America’s healthcare system accounts for 8 percent of the country’s  total carbon emissions. Most hospitals do not have dedicated sustainability staff tackling this issue. Hospital staff are usually focused on urgent day-to-day health care problems.

“Hospitals are kind of unusual institutions—they’re a business, but also a public health service. Their main thing is to protect the health of humans,” Sako says. “But does that stay within the four walls of your facility, or does it go further than that?” 

While doing her coursework at the Humphrey School, Sako sought to find out all she could about the new field of healthcare sustainability. Since so few hospitals have sustainability officers, those who do this work are doing so because they or other staff care passionately about the issue and have made it a part of their jobs. 

“Right now the landscape is driven by pioneers,” she says. “The cool thing about that is everybody comes from a different background, and their own personal reason why they started caring. They are doing what I want to do.”

Humphrey School support

Sako is carving out a place for herself in this nascent field in several ways. As she completed her coursework, she had two work experiences. The first was with the Citizens Utility Board, where she spoke with hundreds of Minnesotans at events and workshops about how to be more energy efficient, save money on their energy bills, and participate in the clean energy transition. 

Then she was awarded a National Science Foundation Circularity Impact Fellowship to work with the City of Minneapolis’s Energy Benchmarking team. Circularity means that products are designed with their end of life in mind, or looped back into the system to be repurposed.

She had the opportunity to share her findings about the City of Minneapolis energy audit process at the National Science Foundation’s trainee conference. 

Now that Sako has completed her degree, she knows that she may have to convince a healthcare executive that there are compelling reasons to invest in sustainability—and hire her. 

“It’s so new it’s not yet structured,” Sako says. “The Humphrey School has supported me so much that I can take the initiative myself to find a position that probably doesn’t exist yet.”