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Mitigation-Resilience-Equity diagram

Together our powerful network will transform the health sector — ensuring it can balance the immediate needs for mitigation, resilience, and equity, while serving as a leader in the broader shift to a just, low-carbon economy.

We believe every person deserves the right to live in a healthy environment – while recognizing that underserved communities are disproportionately impacted by environmental degradation and disease.

Health care is at the epicenter of pandemics, climate disasters, and other public health emergencies. These crises highlight the deeply rooted connection between health care, community health, equity, and resilience. Climate change is a threat multiplier for all social and environmental factors that contribute to disease and widen inequality. These crises individually and collectively have a disproportionate impact on people of color and reveal significant health and socioeconomic disparities within our communities.

We are transforming the health care sector globally to deliver on its core value to “first, do no harm.” We work at the intersection of climate and health: addressing both the impact of the climate crisis on human health and the health care sector’s impact on the climate crisis. We believe every person deserves the right to live in a healthy environment.

Definition: Equity

A system is operating equitably when all people receive fair treatment, access, opportunity, and advancement through addressing the varying barriers experienced by different groups. A system is equitable when it produces a proportional distribution of benefits and burdens across groups.

Our vision for the future

We envision health systems building physical, social, and economic conditions to support community health and well-being, harnessing the enormous economic power and influence of the health care sector to move beyond emergency care toward healing the harm that exists today in the form of ecological degradation, health vulnerabilities, and economic disparities.

 We support health care organizations in their role as anchor institutions as they collaborate with their communities to build resilience so that they can thrive amidst acute and chronic climate, economic, and health disruptions within the ecosystems that sustain them. 

Our anchor model for health systems and communities sparks collaboration and shows health organizations how to engage in equitable planning, decision-making, and solutions-building to build community resilience and address the disproportionate impacts the climate crisis has on underserved communities and the people who face the most risk.

Featured initiatives

Climate leadership

CLIMATE AND HEALTH

Reduce emissions and implement climate-smart health care, driving low-carbon economic transition.

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Place-based work

RESILIENCE

Facilitate deep, trusting partnerships with community-based organizations to build replicable models for collaborative action.

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Growing healthy food communities

HEALTHY FOOD

Uplift community health, wealth, and resilience through purchasing and investments.

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Leveraging the power of food procurement

HEALTHY FOOD

Invest in sustainable and resilient food economies, support producers, and ensure nutrition for all.

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Select resources for equity

Anchored by health care: Strategies for health systems

A modeled approach to health care organizations’ role in building equitable relationships that power community health, wealth, and climate resilience.

Climate resilience for health care and communities: Strategies and case studies

A strategic framework for health care organizations to leverage investments to support equitable decarbonization and build community resilience…

Partnering for resilience: A practical guide to community-based disaster planning for health care

Provides a new approach to disaster planning and climate preparedness built on a partnership between health systems and the communities they serve


Our other core objectives

Mitigation

Transform the health sector to mitigate the climate crisis and its impacts on human health and accelerate the broader transition to a clean energy…

Resilience

Ensure health systems are resilient to climate impacts and are actively supporting community climate resilience as anchor institutions