Each year, Canon Solutions America partners with the Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Management Education (CAHME) to recognize educational institutions that support the advancement of sustainability goals aligned with the Canon corporate philosophy of Kyosei — all people, regardless of race, religion, or culture, harmoniously living and working together into the future for the common good.
The University of Washington (UW) Master of Health Administration (MHA) program is pleased to be the recipient of the 2021 Award for Sustainability in Healthcare Management Education and Practice. The MHA program is housed in the UW Department of Health Systems and Population Health within the UW School of Public Health.
“The University of Washington MHA Program incorporates the noble ideals of sustainability, as acknowledged through the generous support of Canon Solutions America,” said Anthony Stanowski, DHA, FACHE, President and CEO of CAHME. “This award recognizes that the UW MHA program is a leader in advancing the quality of healthcare management education.”
CAHME is an accrediting body for academic programs that offer a professional master’s degree in health care management education, and is considered the standard of measurement of graduate health care management education for the world community. Since its founding in 1970, the MHA Program at the UW School of Public Health has continually maintained CAHME accreditation. The program was acknowledged in the January 2021 edition of Modern Healthcare and will be honored during ACHE Virtual Congress on March 22-25, 2021, and awarded a grant designated to further promote sustainability in health care education.
“This award is an incredible honor and recognition of the values and practices that the UW, our School of Public Health, and our MHA Program have incorporated around sustainability,” said Sarah Cave, Sr. Director of the UW Programs in Health Management and Informatics. “We are proud of the next generation of health care leaders we are training, and their commitment to a sustainable future.” Cave noted that the inspiration to apply for the award came from two UW MHA students, Kaitlin Schoewe and Zayna Salveter, who — motivated in part by their classroom experiences — formed a Planetary Health Committee of the MHA Student Association. The aim of the Committee is to facilitate advocacy and action by fellow students and MHA Programs across the country.
“We realized that the health care field’s ‘do no harm’ policy means the industry needs to lead the way in sustainable operations, requiring administrators to not only show up to the conversations, but lead them.”
— Zayna Salveter
“We realized that the health care field’s ‘do no harm’ policy means the industry needs to lead the way in sustainable operations, requiring administrators to not only show up to the conversations, but lead them,” Salveter said, citing research that shows U.S. health care is responsible for 10 percent of our country’s carbon emissions. Salveter and Schoewe added that the industry has not broadly adopted practices to reduce this number or lower resource use, which is why they reached out to more than 100 other MHA programs throughout the country to create the National Health Administration Climate Collaboration.
“It is an honor to recognize the University of Washington MHA Program for its achievements that support sustainability best practices through education and training. We are very eager to see what the future of the Planetary Health Committee will bring,” said Peter P. Kowalczuk, president, Canon Solutions America, Inc. “It is initiatives such as this that make us proud to continue to support CAHME in their endeavor to integrate important sustainability goals into health care management.”