Environmentally Sustainable HeAlth REsearch (SHARE)
SHARE Reflections
SHARE Reflections is a series of short blogs capturing real conversations about sustainability in research, where environmental ideals intersect with ethical concerns, inequalities and practical constraints.
Impact
This research moves beyond 'tool solutionism’ to develop more ethical, reflexive and context-sensitive sustainable practices in health research. By engaging with diverse research communities, we will co-design context-sensitive tools that reduce the environmental impact of health research that:
- are fair and practical;
- incorporate local knowledge and values of diverse geographical contexts;
- avoid reinforcing power imbalances between research communities in high and low-resource settings.
Project duration
1 May 2025 - 30 April 2028
SHARE (environmentally Sustainable HeAlth REsearch) is an international research community exploring how health research can be conducted such that its environmental impacts are considered and addressed in ways that are fair and meaningful in different cultures and geographies.
While health research plays a vital role in improving lives, its environmental impacts include, for example, carbon emissions from energy to run laboratories; laboratory waste in the form of single use plastics and the disposal of hazardous and non-hazardous chemicals; carbon emissions from energy associated with running AI algorithms; and transport emissions associated with clinical trials.
Wellcome funded, SHARE brings together researchers from around the world to study how we can reduce these impacts in ways that reflect local realities, values, and priorities.
To do this, SHARE is exploring the growing number of tools that have been developed to help researchers reduce their environmental impact: carbon calculators, green lab guidelines, certification systems, among others. These tools are primarily developed in the Global North. Through interviews, workshops, and creative methods like photovoice, we’re carrying out empirical research to understand how these tools are used and experienced by researchers in diverse settings in the UK, Kenya, Ghana, India, and Brazil.
At the same time, SHARE is developing a conceptual framework to guide how sustainability can be understood and practised in ways that are just, reflexive, and context-sensitive, and in a way that moves beyond tool-solutionism.