Events

Watch the 2024 Levi Symposium

Agenda and Speakers

4-4:10 p.m. Opening Remarks

Jeffrey P. Kahn, PhD, MPH
Andreas C. Dracopoulos Director
Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics

Jeremy Greene, MD, PhD
Director, Center for Medical Humanities and Social Medicine
William H. Welch Professor of this History of Medicine
Johns Hopkins School of Medicine

Maria Merritt, PhD
Associate Director for Faculty Affairs
Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics

4:10-5:45 p.m. First Panel

Moderated by Jeremy Greene, MD, PhD
Director, Center for Medical Humanities and Social Medicine
William H. Welch Professor of this History of Medicine
Johns Hopkins School of Medicine

• Question 1: Sustainability vs. Safety (infection control)

Shira Abeles, MD
Medical Director of Sustainability
University of California San Diego Health

Lisa Maragakis, MD
Senior Director of Infection Prevention and Hospital Epidemiologist
Johns Hopkins Medicine

• Question 2: Sustainability vs. Efficacy (operating room / devices)

Nicholas Dalesio, MD, MPH
Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine
Johns Hopkins Medicine

Hardeep Singh, MD, MPH
Medicine and Health Services Research
Baylor College of Medicine

Co-Chief, Health Policy, Quality and Informatics
Center for Innovations in Quality, Effectiveness and Safety
Michael E. DeBakey VA Medical Center

• Question 3: Sustainability vs. Efficiency (economics / logistics)

Jeremiah Headen
U.S. Climate and Health Campaigner
Health Care Without Harm

Enrico Vona
Vice President, Hospital Sales
Stericycle

Seema Wadhwa, ALM
Executive Director for Environmental Stewardship
Kaiser Permanente

5:45-6 p.m. Break

6-7 p.m. Second Panel

Moderated by Christopher D. Heaney, PhD
Environmental Health and Engineering
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

• Question 4: Disposability and Environmental Justice

Matthew A. Aubourg, MSPH
Environmental Health and Engineering
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

Deanna Benner, WHNP
Women’s Health Nurse Practitioner
ChristianaCare

Sarah Bucic, MSN, RN
Policy Analyst
Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments

Greg Sawtell
Zero Waste Just Transition Director
South Baltimore Community Land Trust

Julie Sze, PhD
American Studies
University of California, Davis

Tiffany Thompson
South Baltimore Community Land Trust

7-8 p.m. Reception

Roughly 80 percent of healthcare’s oversized carbon footprint derives from the production, transportation, use, and disposal of a single-use medical supply chain. Yet as health care organizations try to practice ‘resource stewardship’ – that is, to move away from single-use disposable items toward sustainable use of durable items – they encounter widespread perceptions that disposability is a necessary virtue in modern health care. Caregivers, patients, and health-system managers fear that any move from disposability to sustainability must lead to trade-offs in safety (from infectious threats), efficacy (in pharmaceutical delivery) or efficiency (in cost-effectiveness).

This Levi Symposium will question these perceived trade-offs, disentangling legitimate evidential and moral reasoning from the inertia of convenience. Convening scholars and practitioners in bioethics, clinical practice, environmental justice, practice innovation, and health policy, we aim to host a multi-disciplinary exploration of how we can elucidate policy pathways that harmonize clinical safety, efficacy, and efficiency with sustainability.