CARBOMICA emissions reduction tool

When health facility managers are considering what actions they can take to adapt their facility’s structures and health services to beat the heat, it’s important that they also start taking action to reduce their facility’s carbon footprint. 

“People intuitively think of solutions [to beat the heat] like air conditioning, but it is a measure that contributes to climate change”, explained Nasser Fardousi, a HIGH Horizons researcher at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. 

With this concern in mind, HIGH Horizons researchers set out to help health facility managers choose facility adaptations that can both reduce the impact of heat and also lower the facility’s carbon emissions. 
 
Our team – led by the Centre for Sexual Health and HIV AIDS Research (CeSHHAR) in Zimbabwe, Wits RHI in South Africa, and Aga Khan Health Services in Kenya, with support from the Burnet Institute – developed CARBOMICA, a software tool designed for decision-makers at health facilities to identify ways to reduce their carbon footprints with limited financial resources.  
 
Using CARBOMICA (CARBOn Mitigation Intervention for healthCare fAcilities), health managers can input data about the carbon emissions of a health facility and its operations, identify the interventions that would best reduce the facility carbon footprint, and find the best bang-for-buck solution to reduce emissions within a budget. 

The tool can also help guide decision-makers to strategically distribute scarce resources.