The Roanoker January/February 2022 - 11

Do You know...?
Do You Know...
Sara Wohlford?
written and photographed by Dan Smith
She came up with a way to affect Carilion Clinic's environmental
impact and those programs are growing.
ter Wohlford's desk with awards:
Practice Greenhealth Environmental
Excellence Award (20172021);
Governor's Environmental
Excellence Award - Gold (2019);
Virginia Nurses Foundation, 40
Under 40 (2015).
Wohlford, 45, earned a deSara
Wohlford:
" I am really so proud
of the program, the
steps we've taken,
the progress we've
made. "
W
hen Carilion
Clinic CEO and
president Nancy
Agee was asked to
give an evaluation of Sara Wohlford,
the organization's Efficiency
and Sustainability Manager, she
brightened up and let it flow:
" Sara Wohlford has to be one
of the dearest, kindest, most curious
and smartest people I know.
She's simply extraordinary. Her
enthusiasm, coupled with genuine
curiosity, has charmed us.
" Our clinical teams are eager to
find ways to recycle and be 'green.'
She carefully and thoughtfully
considers opportunities and offers
suggestions for improvement. Her
understanding of changes to safeguard
the environment, devices or
ecosystem so we can be more efficient
as well as environmentally
conscious and effective is enormously
helpful. Importantly, she
is helping us provide the best care
TheRoanoker.com
possible, avoid medical errors and
create a positive work and safeguard
our environment for the
long haul.
" At the height of COVID,
I would find her on one of our
COVID units, in full PPE, observing
how staff was performing
in that new and difficult environment
and making suggestions to
help them work with patients. It
would have been so easy for her to
work from home or a desk somewhere,
but she and her team were
right there, helping even when it
was a frightening experience for
everyone. "
That " frightening experience
for everyone " resulted in a turn
with the dread virus for Wohlford,
one she said resembled " a
bad case of the flu. " But she never
complained. She doesn't do that.
She simply goes to what's next
and looks for positive results.
Those results have helped clutgree
in broadcast journalism with
a focus on PR, then pivoted to
health care at Jefferson College
of Health Sciences nursing school,
and finally, earned a master's in
public health from Virginia Tech.
She and her building contractor
husband Arthur had two babies
in the middle of that.
She was working at Carilion
when the Big Idea came to her:
Make Carilion an environmental
role model. She studied the possibilities
beginning in 2004. " I talked
to Nancy about it, spent quite
a bit of time - several years - revising
the plan. When I felt like I
was in position with a sound request,
I took it to Nancy. She was
so welcoming and gave really good
feedback on how to strengthen
the case. "
Her plan is making its way
through the entire Carilion system
of hospitals, emphasizing environmental
impact, helping to cut
costs and waste and stressing recycling
and reuse (including eliminating
as many single-use plastic
products as possible).
" What's exciting for me is to
know that in Carilion's 2025 strategic
plan, environmental sustainability
is directly addressed for the
first time. That made me incredibly
excited. For health care, sustainability,
environmental health
and community health are vital.
This is a positive direction and
there are some health systems that
have been doing it for 10-20 years,
so not flying blind. "
She has helped organize the
Carilion system with Sustainability
Strategic Deployment,
pulling 19 senior people to discuss,
plan and implement it. Her
department is small with just her
and one sustainability coordinator-Marina
Sopello- " who
helps manage all the programs,
especially when they are up and
running. There are lots of nuts and
bolts to keep in place. She is my
right hand. "
Wohlford asks, " What do we
want our focus to be on? There are
several goals: 1. communication; 2.
less waste; 3. greening the OR; 4.
leaner energy.
" Across all hospitals we want
a 20% recycling rate compared to
total waste. We want to evaluate
composting. We want to achieve
a 50-80% construction and demolition
recycling rate on new
projects. [Carilion is involved in
a major construction project.] For
the OR, we want to reduce the
volume of blue wrap to landfills
by 50% and reduce greenhouse gas
emissions from anesthetic waste
gases; reduce average energy use
across all hospitals by three percent
by 2025. "
Ambitious? " We can accomplish
this. I believe in it. "
As she helps remake the work
environment at Carilion, she is
also emphasizing environmentalism
to her daughters, who are
12 and 14. " It's been neat with
our children, " she says. " We have
raised them doing the physical
stuff: recycling, singing songs
while picking up trash on walks.
We've made it easy for them and
engrained environmentalism into
who they are. They have become
young ladies who like to go out
and help in the community. I
wanted them to enjoy it with me
because it is so important to me
and wouldn't it be great if kids
wanted to do good things? We
want to teach them to be mindful
citizens. "
Ultimately, Wohlford says, " I
am really so proud of the program,
the steps we've taken, the progress
we've made. "
Nancy Agee agrees. I
JAN/FEB 2022 11
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