Making Sustainability Durable: Why Governance Matters in Healthcare

Back to Stories

• Share This Story

Share This Story

In conversation with – Georg Nalbant, Director Finance Excellence

Sustainability is increasingly recognized as a critical part of how healthcare organizations operate and create long-term value. While it is often associated with environmental impact, emissions targets and climate action - it is equally about governance, resilience and ensuring commitments can be translated into meaningful action.

As reinforced in Valneva’s recently published 2025 Sustainability Report , these priorities are becoming increasingly interconnected. World Environment Day provides an opportunity to reflect on the broader picture, and the role healthcare organizations can play in addressing both environmental and public health challenges.

Making sustainability durable

As Director Finance Excellence at Valneva, my role sits at the intersection of finance excellence, internal controls, governance and sustainability reporting. While these areas may seem distinct, they all share a common objective: ensuring the information we use to make decisions is robust, consistent, and useful.

Throughout my career, much of my work has focused on building structures, strengthening cross-functional collaboration, and implementing governance frameworks that create accountability across organizations. These same capabilities are increasingly important within sustainability.

At Valneva, our ambitions are clearly defined. We have established targets, focus areas and a clear understanding of where we want to go. The challenge is making those ambitions durable. That requires clear ownership, effective governance and alignment between sustainability priorities and management decision-making.

Sustainability cannot exist as a separate agenda. If it is disconnected from how decisions are made across the business, it will never become fully embedded.

Turning strategy into action

Valneva’s sustainability strategy is built around three pillars: Protecting Lives, Preserving the Planet, and Reaching People. What makes these pillars powerful is that they translate our mission into operational priorities.

• Protecting Lives reflects the direct public health purpose of the company. We develop vaccines, improve access, maintain high safety standards and focus on addressing unmet medical needs.

• Preserving the Planet recognizes that how we operate matters just as much as what we produce. This includes our approach to climate impact, materials, waste and biodiversity.

• Reaching People ensures that the human and ethical dimension remains central to our strategy, whether that involves our employees, partners, human rights, responsible business conduct or trust.

For me, what is most compelling is that these pillars are not separate agendas. Together, they connect product impact, organizational responsibility, and integrity in a way that supports our broader mission.

Public health preparedness and climate change

The connection between sustainability and public health is becoming increasingly clear. Climate change is no longer a distant environmental issue; it is already influencing disease patterns around the world.

Changing temperatures, shifting rainfall patterns and the expansion of disease-carrying mosquitos are increasing the risk of infectious diseases in regions they were previously uncommon, including parts of Europe. This is changing the conversation around preparedness significantly. It requires organizations to think more systematically about resilience, readiness, and access.

Chikungunya is one example of this shift. Historically concentrated in specific geographic regions, exposure to the virus is expanding alongside the spread of disease-carrying mosquitos. For Valneva, responding to emerging health challenges like these requires not only scientific innovation, but also collaboration with international partners to help improve preparedness and support access in affected regions.

In my view, vaccines are among the most powerful tools available to support sustainable healthcare because they prevent severe illness, long-term complications and broader disease transmission before they occur. By reducing pressure on healthcare systems and helping protect vulnerable populations, vaccines contribute to both public health and long-term resilience.

Balancing innovation and responsibility

Sustainability also plays an important role in how vaccines are developed and manufactured.

Vaccine development relies on highly specialized biological materials, creating both responsibility and risk. This makes topics such as biodiversity, biosourced materials, and animal testing important considerations for Valneva.

At Valneva, our approach is guided by balance. We recognize that some materials and testing methods remain necessary under current scientific and regulatory requirements, while continuing to assess alternatives where feasible. This includes our commitment to the recognized 3Rs framework for animal testing – replacement, reduction and refinement.

For me, sustainability means remaining scientifically credible, ethically aware and operationally realistic while continuing to deliver on our mission to support healthcare preparedness.

Looking ahead

What excites me most about the future is that sustainability is becoming more integrated, more evidence-based, and more strategic. It is moving beyond a standalone discipline and becoming part of how organizations think about ethics, resilience, and long-term operational performance.

At Valneva, we aim to ensure that sustainability continues to be embedded into decision-making across the organization. Ambitions, targets and commitments are important, but lasting progress depends on turning them into meaningful action through strong governance, accountability, and collaboration.

By combining innovation with responsibility and partnership, organizations like Valneva can make a meaningful contribution – protecting lives, preserving the planet and reaching people in a way that is practical, transparent and built for the long term.

See All Stories

Leadership

Leadership