Pitt’s One Health Day Explores the Relationship of Sustainability and Health Care

The Office of Sustainability for the Health Sciences hosted its second annual One Health Day, part of an international event recognizing the interconnectedness of human, animal and environmental health, on Nov. 14 at Alan Magee Scaife Hall. 

The event’s featured speaker, Ann-Christine Duhaime, Nicholas T. Zervas Distinguished Professor of Neurosurgery, Harvard Medical School, and senior pediatric neurosurgeon, Massachusetts General Hospital, discussed the human brain’s role in environmental outcomes.  

Duhaime, author of the 2022 book “Minding the Climate: How Neuroscience Can Help Solve Our Environmental Crisis,” began her fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute in 2016. Since then, she has served as a faculty associate at the Harvard University Center for the Environment, where she investigates the neurobiology of word circuitry and toxicity as it relates to pro-environmental behavior.  

She traces her interest in sustainability to an experience with a patient with Rasmussen’s encephalitis, a rare and progressive neurological disease that causes chronic inflammation in one hemisphere of the brain. Currently, the only effective treatment is to either remove or disconnect the affected half—meaning the functions of one half of the brain are going to be lost. The patient’s brain was affected on the left side, the language hemisphere. Eventually, it was decided that surgery was needed, and despite concerns, it proved successful. The patient’s mother sent Duhaime a photo of the patient overlooking a forest as a symbol of their excitement for the future.    

After a moment of profound joy while witnessing the patient’s recovery, Duhaime’s gaze shifted to the trees in the photo. She paused and wondered whether the forest’s future could be as bright as that of her former patient. The thought weighed on her: caring for one child at a time was deeply rewarding, yet she recognized that the forests—and the generations of children who could grow alongside them—also needed attention. She began to sense that she could be doing more.  

When she shifted her focus to sustainability, she connected it to the human reward system—the brain’s mechanism for shaping pleasure, habit formation and motivation. 

“Our brains evolve for survival,” Duhaime said. “If you’re an early human who figures out how to dry fish, build shelter and weave cloth—you survive. The more you can do, the better your chances. That’s why we have a deep-rooted tendency to want more—more food, more resources, more security. Fat, sugar, salt, red meat—these were once rare and vital, so we’ve evolved to crave them. But now, in a word of abundance, those same cravings work against us. What once ensured our survival now threatens our health.”  

Duhaime continued that sustainable behavior goes against our neurologic wiring for immediate rewards and perceiving the impact of individual actions. The potential for change lies in the malleability of the human-reward system.  

“We can learn to find joy in change, even when it’s hard.”  

The event included an interactive activity to prompt participants to think about sustainability in their everyday lives and featured a zero-waste, mostly vegetarian lunch. The poster session had more than 90 participants and below are its winners.  

Sustainable Healthcare Challenge Winners 

• “Flipping the Paradigm: Using Lessons from Comparative Assessment of Surgical Supply Use in High and Low Resource Settings to Develop a Green OR Pilot at UPMC,” by Jennifer Makin, Nat Jones, Pamela Moalli, Neha Shetty and Amanda Artsen ($50,000) 

• “Closing the Loop: A Multilayer Mask System to Capture, Convert and Neutralize Anesthetic Gases,” by Shaunak Patil, Nitin Agarwal, Janam Patel and Ayesha Waheed ($25,000)  

• “Reducing Lab Plastic Waste through Reuse of “Single-Use” Consumables,” by David Gau, Melissa Bilec, Grace Tuan and Dylan Shields ($25,000) 

• “DRDIN-MPS: A Sustainable, Patient-Specific Microphysiology Platform for Diabetes Drug Discovery,” by Ipsita Banerjee, Chandan Sen, Michael Boninger, Raghunath Reddy Bommana and Erin Parlow ($25,000)  

Student Research Funding ($2,500)  

• “Eat Well and Waste Less: Sustainable Cooking and Composting Education for Health Science Students,” by Cynthia McMahan, Erica Fan, Jenny Snyder and Corey Flynn  

• “Incorporating a Sustainability Framework in Bioengineering Laboratory Education,” by Aqsa Owais, Tyler Johnston and Carsten Stuckenholz  

Student Research Presentations 

• “Characterizing the Patient Population of Interfacility Helicopter Transfers to UPMC Facilities,” by Rami Homsi 

• “Developing a Scope 3 Greenhouse Gas Inventory,” by Trent Stross 

Student Research Poster Winner  

• “Prototyping a Sustainable Pulse Oximeter for Pediatric Cases,” by Natalie Ceccarelli  

Student Education Poster Winner  

• “From Waste to Whitening: Using Eggshell-Derived Hydroxyapatite as a Sustainable Alternative to Amalgam and Composite Fillings,” by Maahi Soni  

Student Implementation Poster Winner  

• “Composting Used Animal Food and Bedding,” by Kelly Barko