Critical Conversations: Healthcare without growth? The opportunities and the challenges of degrowth for health and healthcare
Co-hosted by:
The Collaborative Centre for Climate, Health and Sustainable Care, University of Toronto
Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research, York University
Inclusive Economies and Sustainable Livelihoods, University of Toronto Scarborough
11:30am-12:00pm – Coffee & networking*
12:00pm-1:00pm – Seminar (hybrid/recorded)
1:00pm-2:00pm – Lunch & networking*
*Coffee and Lunch will be provided to those attending in-person.
Healthcare without growth? The opportunities and the challenges of degrowth for health and healthcare.
Global and national economic growth rates have been slowing for decades. Some embrace deliberate “degrowth” or “post-growth” economic strategies as an essential precondition for avoiding ecological and societal collapse; others see involuntary degrowth as an inevitable consequence of failing to remain within planetary boundaries. Reducing harmful overconsumption may offer profound opportunities to improve health; yet modern healthcare systems are deeply dependent upon economic growth, and may struggle to remain viable under conditions of degrowth. In this talk, Professor Martin Hensher will consider the opportunities, risks and challenges for health and healthcare in a degrowth or postgrowth world – and how we might best prepare for them.
Speaker:
- Professor Martin Hensher
About the speaker:
Professor Martin Hensher is the Henry Baldwin Professorial Research Fellow in Health Systems Sustainability at the Menzies Institute for Medical Research at the University of Tasmania. His program of work explores how healthcare systems can meet the environmental, economic and social challenges of the years ahead. Martin draws on health and ecological economics to explore big systemic challenges: how health care can respond to climate change and ecological crisis, how it might function in a slower-growth future, and why investing more resources might increasingly not lead to better outcomes. Professor Hensher has over thirty years’ experience in health economics, planning and financing, gained in the UK, Australia, Africa, Europe and Central Asia. Professor Hensher served as the European Union Consultant in Health Economics in the South African National Department of Health; senior economic adviser in the Department of Health England; and a senior executive in the Tasmanian Department of Health.
Recommended readings:
- Hensher, Martin and Aillon, Jean-Louis. Degrowth: health and healthcare in Nelson, Anitra (Ed.) (2025), Routledge Handbook of Degrowth, p250-264. (Open Access)
- Hensher, Martin et al. (2024). Health economics in a world of uneconomic growth. Applied Health Economics and Health Policy, 22(4), 427-433.
- Hensher, Martin. (2023). Preparing for the degrowth transition in healthcare: understanding the challenges and opportunities. Degrowth Journal 1, 00033.
About the Critical Conversations series:
A space for critical and heterodox ideas to develop and be tested.
Much academic work on climate change, planetary health and sustainable care aims at improvement of existing practices or systems, to reduce ecological harms or manage the health and well-being implications of climate change and ecological decline.
This series will provide an academic space to question assumptions about what changes are necessary or possible, how current practices are held in place, and how learners, educators, researchers, and practitioners might respond.
Recording: