Urban communities face urban heat island effect, on top of existing health outcome disparities due to socioeconomic inequities. As cities experience more frequent and longer periods of extreme heat, some are working toward solutions through equity-focused, community-based approaches. This session will feature Philadelphia, Pennsylvania’s Beat the Heat initiative along with the Nature’s Cooling Systems project in Phoenix, Arizona to provide insight into planning and implementing strategies to address extreme heat dangers at the neighborhood level. 

In rural settings, interventions to extreme heat and heat stress must take into account the added challenges of greater travel distances and other limits to resource access. This session will highlight the North Carolina Division of Public Health’s analysis of heat-related illness in rural communities, and rural-focused heat stress interventions carried out by Sustainable Sandhills in North Carolina, health threats faced by farm workers, and Public Citizen’s potential Federal policy solutions to protect workers from heat.

Rising temperatures have significant impacts on ecosystems. This session will consider the effects of heat stress on a range of species and ecosystems across North America , including aquatic, terrestrial and marine habitats, and natural resources management strategies to adapt to these challenges to protect species as well as ecosystem services that support human communities.