Green Guide for Health Care

The first quantifiable health-based sustainable design toolkit, serving as a foundational reference document for the USGBC’s LEED for Healthcare rating system

The Center has been engaged in greening the healthcare sector since Gail Vittori wrote the influential paper Green and Healthy Buildings for the Health Care Industry, presented at the 2001 Setting Healthcare’s Environmental Agenda conference in San Francisco—the health care industry’s first environmentally focused conference to specifically address green buildings, among other topics. The paper laid the groundwork from which the Green Guide for Health Care and other ecologically-oriented health care specific initiatives.

In 2002, The Center convened the Green Guide for Health Care, the health care sector’s first quantifiable sustainable design toolkit integrating enhanced environmental and health principles and practices into the planning, design, construction and operations of health care facilities. The Green Guide evolved to be a project of The Center and Health Care Without Harm, supported by a Senior Director, three co-coordinators, and a diverse group of design, construction and policy professionals with expertise in the health care sector who serve on Green Guide volunteer committees and working groups.  

The Green Guide v2.2 Design/Construction and Operations achieved widespread use and adoption, with more than 225 registered projects, representing more than 41 million square feet of health care facility design and construction, and more than 33,000 website registrants, more than 25 percent of whom are from outside the U.S. The Green Guide served as a foundational reference document for the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED for Healthcare; with LEED for Healthcare’s formal launch in 2011, the Green Guide was sunset. 

The Center’s engagement in greening the healthcare sector also includes consultancies on landmark green healthcare facilities, such as the Dell Children’s Medical Center of Central Texas—the first LEED Platinum certified hospital in the world—workshops and conference presentations, and Gail Vittori’s co-authorship, with Robin Guenther, of Sustainable Healthcare Architecture, published by Wiley (1st edition 2008; 2nd edition 2013).