Synopsis: Climate change is creating ongoing, escalating stress that is accumulating in our physical infrastructure, in our social, economic and government systems, and within the communities and people those systems serve. Most importantly to the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (NYC Health), climate change is killing New Yorkers.

Challenge: NYC Health has played a key role in citywide climate action and sustainability strategy for more than 15 years. Our environmental health research and surveillance provides a foundation for action – a moral imperative based on evidence pointing to populations and neighborhoods disproportionately impacted by climate health impacts where prioritized investment is needed most. In 2023 the agency made the strategic priority to “mobilize against the health impacts of climate change.” Our Climate Health Team realized we needed to expand our efforts and collaborations across the department to uplift and embed climate objectives in our core public health work. We decided to make the climate health strategic priority actionable by creating with our colleagues a dedicated, empowered, action-oriented workgroup of cross-discipline public health professionals: the Climate Health Task Force.

Solution: This intra-agency workgroup took on the mandate to recognize and cultivate the climate, health and equity intersections within NYC Health’s core and priority work.

We wanted to establish the “Climate and Health Committee” described in NACCHO’s Guide to Climate and Health Programs. Success was dependent upon leadership-driven accountability, empowered and dedicated climate health leads from all 16 divisions and offices, and a clear implementation plan, including level of effort for task force members and indicators of success.

We started by guiding executive-level leadership in selection of leads, recommending staff with (1) access to division/office leadership; (2) passion for climate health work; and (3) empowered leader within the division/office who can help identify and shepherd projects. In addition, we established a task force meeting schedule of 3 times a year with pre- and post-meeting asks of members and an estimated time commitment of about half a day per month. We also explicitly addressed the risk of limited resources to do more in already overworked programs by taking an intentional approach designed to identify climate-related action within ongoing projects. With relatively little effort, we aimed to support programs to lean into sustainability, resiliency or adaptation aspects of their existing portfolio, providing examples of possible opportunities – ideas to spark interest – for every division in line with the examples of climate-related activities by public health program in A Guide to Climate and Health Programs.

Results: Using CDC Public Health Infrastructure funding, we hired an accomplished Senior Director of Environmental Health Policy with deep climate health expertise. Under her leadership, the Climate Health Task Force has accomplished the following actions in its inaugural 9 months:

• Identified climate health-related activities already happening across NYC Health – a minimum of 1 in each division/office.
• Committed to 1 goal for each division/office to be accomplished during calendar year 2025, focusing on achievable activities that build upon existing work. For example:
  • The Office of External Affairs is conducting a minimum of 1 climate health-focused social media outreach per month.
  • Disease Control is developing a surveillance framework to examine observed and future climate impacts on vector-borne disease.
  • Administration is leading by example by applying to FEMA and EPA funding to make NYC Health facilities more resilient to climate impacts and reduce emissions.

• Launched an NYC Health Year of Climate, focused on in-reach with department staff and programs to educate on climate health, create spaces for climate health discussions, and identify opportunities for concrete action to embed climate across our work.

Lessons Learned: Our Task Force is still in its early days, but we see great promise in NYC Health’s coordinated approach to addressing the greatest public health threat to our city and beyond. In addition to consulting NACCHO’s Guide to Climate and Health Programs, we have found that successful implementation of the Climate and Health Committee has required: (1) explicit leadership commitment to climate action, (2) dedicated, expert coordination of the committee by a senior staff person, taking approximately .20 FTE, and (3) intentional focus on building climate action from the robust foundation of existing public health work.

Contact Information

Carolyn Olson
[email protected]
NYC Department of Health & Mental Hygiene, New York