What's Happening

May 19, 2026, Santa Cruz, California – Sister Mary Ellen Leciejewski, OP, Vice President of Environmental Sustainability for CommonSpirit Health, dedicates her time to ensuring that the departments in all of the system’s 2,200 care sites – including 142 hospitals – are striving to make their departments more environmentally sustainable.

Sister Mary Ellen oversees sustainability program development and implementation across the 24-state healthcare system. Part of her ministry is discovering ways that each care site is working toward sustainability and whether their practices can be successfully duplicated at other sites, so all of the sites “can share the best practices and the challenges,” she said in an interview for the April 2026 issue of Catholic Health World.

Many of the sites have found creative ways to make their work sustainable in large and small ways, Sister Mary Ellen said. For example, to reduce the use of plastic by hospitals, CommonSpirit worked with a company to develop a “mostly biodegradable version” of the single-use plastic needle counters used during surgery, she said.

Sister Mary Ellen appreciates the enthusiasm of the employees in their sustainability efforts. “Our collective dedication to these duties and responsibilities is driven by a singular purpose: to cultivate a more sustainable and healthier environment for our patients and communities,” she said.

Read the entire article by Valerie Schremp Hahn.

Caption for above feature photo: Sister Mary Ellen Leciejewski, OP, works in the community garden at Dignity Health-Dominican Hospital in Santa Cruz.
Adrian Dominican Sisters File Photo