What's Happening

April 27, 2019, Santa Cruz, California – Sister Mary Ellen Leciejewski, OP, Vice President of Corporate Responsibility for Dignity Health, notes in a special Earth Day article in National Catholic Reporter that the hospitals in her health care system are focusing on their responsibility to be good stewards of natural resources. Sister Mary Ellen has long been in the forefront of ecological efforts at Dignity Health, now part of CommonSpirit Health since the merger of Dignity Health and Catholic Health Initiatives in February 2019. Under Sister Mary Ellen’s leadership, Dignity Health set a number of specific goals to “reduce its carbon footprint by 2020.” To read the portion of the article on Sister Mary Ellen and her work with Dignity Health, click here and scroll down a bit more than half way through the article.

April 30, 2018, San Francisco, California – Sister Mary Ellen Leciejewski, OP, Vice President of Corporate Responsibility for Dignity Health, sees great environmental benefits from the health system’s recent policy of removing plastic straws and stirrers from its hospital cafeterias. Patrons in the cafeterias appreciate the ecological benefits – such as decreasing the amount of plastics in the landfill and keeping marine animals safer. The new policy is expected to prevent the use of 4 million plastic straws per year Read the Catholic Health World article by Julie Minda.

A related article on Sister Mary Ellen and Dignity Health’s reduction of plastic straw use can be found in a recent article in The National Catholic Reporter. Scroll down about two-thirds of the way to find the portion of the article focusing on Sister Mary Ellen.