Our Mission

The AHA鈥檚 Community Health and Environment initiative aims to offer guidance and resources to support hospitals鈥 efforts to assess, plan for and respond to the impacts of the environment on communities鈥 health.

Background

The AHA鈥檚 Community Health and Environment initiative was established in 2024 to address the differential health risks posed by environmental conditions on communities throughout the United States.

The initiative launched with the basic assumption that to promote health at the population level, hospitals have a vested interest in understanding and partnering to mitigate harm to health from the environment and extreme weather events.

Many U.S. hospitals are already partnering with community stakeholders to prepare for and collaboratively address the environment as a driver of population health outcomes. The Community Health and Environment initiative seeks to provide these and all hospitals with actionable tools to meet this need.

Our Goals

The Community Health and Environment initiative brings together hospital and health system leaders to discuss and examine their roles in fostering environment-resilient communities by expanding their existing community and population health strategies and by developing tools and resources to support this work.

Specifically, the initiative seeks to:

  • Confer with a technical expert panel.
  • Convene Community Health and Environment workshops.
  • Produce tactical snapshot reports to disseminate insights from each workshop.
  • Create a comprehensive Community Health and Environment report summarizing insights from the workshops.
  • Develop an environment as a social driver of health toolkit.
  • Host additional learning opportunities

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