Mental health.
Community mental health care is travel-heavy and audit-light — the least-measured corner of most systems' footprints. The entries here are honest about that: several are grade C, flagged for local audit rather than borrowed certainty.
Every action, graded.
Evidence grades travel with every claim. Click through to the study behind each number.
| ID | Action | Evidence | CO₂e / yr |
|---|---|---|---|
| ACT-051 | Cluster community visits geographically CSH community services modelling; local audit needed — flagged as gap |
Estimated — local audit needed | est. |
| ACT-052 | Blend remote contact into care plans where clinically sound Remote mental health care literature, 2020-2025 syntheses |
Cohort / modelling | est. |
| ACT-053 | Audit the estate: out-of-hours heating in day centres NHS estates benchmarks; local meter audit — grade C |
Estimated — local audit needed | est. |
| ACT-054 | Green-social-prescribing pathways where commissioning allows Green social prescribing evidence, DEFRA/NHS England pilots |
Cohort / modelling | qual. |
Before you start.
The gap is the finding
Four actions, half of them grade C — that's the state of MH evidence, honestly reported.
Travel first
Where your caseload sits on the map decides more than anything else you control. Map it first.
No therapy is chosen by footprint.
Every action on this page passes through this gate.
Nature-based and community interventions carry outcome evidence; carbon co-benefits are unquantified. That cuts both ways: we don't claim greenness as a reason to prescribe, and we don't let footprint weigh against a therapy that works. Route batching, estate contracts, supplier choice — things the organisation controls, never the therapy.
The honest gap.
Mental health is the least-measured corner of the system: no national model publishes per-institution mental-health footprints, and most community services run on travel-heavy visit schedules with thin audit data. We state the gap rather than borrow certainty: three of four actions here are grade C, explicitly marked for local audit. When your service measures its own routes and premises, send the numbers — the first real dataset will earn its own ledger line.
This ledger's assessment · research/dept-evidence.md
Asked and answered.
Why are so many actions here grade C?
Because the measurement literature does not exist at service level yet. Publishing inflated certainty would be easier; it would also be wrong. Grade C means: credible estimate, needs your local audit.
What's the biggest likely lever?
Community visit travel. Comparable services put most of their footprint on the road — putting one area's patients on one route is the simplest first move. Make it, then measure.
Are green social prescriptions evidence-backed?
Outcome evidence for nature-based interventions is real; the carbon co-benefit is plausible but not yet quantified. Grade B for outcomes, honest unknown for carbon.