Attendees at a 2025 CCN meeting gather at the 麻豆传媒资源 Building in Washington, DC. Photo: Samantha Phillips
The Climate Communities Network set out with a simple but bold idea: that the communities most affected by climate change are the best poised to build solutions. In the Network’s first year, that idea is already yielding success.
By Jamie Durana
On a warm day in November 2023, the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) welcomed a group of community leaders from across the United States to launch the Climate Communities Network (CCN), an initiative with a straightforward message: communities on the front lines of the climate crisis are best positioned to create and drive of solutions. The group of 18 local leaders (CCN Members) and 10 representatives from philanthropy, academia, government, and industry (Strategic Partners) are pursuing innovative strategies that emerge from the expertise and lived experiences of communities most affected. The cities, towns, and regions CCN Members represent are experiencing firsthand impacts like extreme heat, poor air quality, flooding, and other climate-related health threats.
The Network’s strength lies in its collaborative structure. By connecting CCN Member communities tackling the inextricably linked challenges of climate change and public health with Strategic Partners ready to help put plans into action, the nationwide Network can expand community-led initiatives that address climate resilience and health outcomes.
On that November day, CCN Members and Strategic Partners started a journey together that began with a commitment to building partnerships and achieving community priorities. As the CCN completes its first year, results demonstrate that centering community expertise is an effective strategy for creating and advancing climate solutions that work.
A Foundation of Trust
The CCN began with an open call for applications from committed leaders at community-based organizations across the United States. The goal was to bring together people in communities who are both facing and actively addressing real climate change impacts that affect their health outcomes today . CCN Members are united by a desire to showcase and uplift the power of community-led climate initiatives designed to improve health for everyone.
Early in CCN’s work, the group acknowledged that uplifting community voices and building authentic relationships, and continuously nurturing them, is key to progress. Identifying the priorities of each CCN Member鈥檚 community and determining commonalities was an essential step to doing both.
CCN Members bring a wealth of knowledge: about their communities’ priorities, strategies that work, and insights on remaining challenges. Within the collaborative environment fostered through the CCN, Members and Strategic Partners have been able to find opportunities to work together to scale and amplify local efforts.
In the first year, the CCN has built a shared community with a strong foundation of trust, essential for the Network’s deep collaboration. Making connections with other Members in the same region or those on the opposite side of the country has afforded an invaluable knowledge-sharing opportunity. Regular meetings and small group sessions have formalized space for Members and Strategic Partners to spend time to really get to know one another, and to better understand what they can achieve together.
Regional Clusters and Learning Collaboratives
The creation of Regional Clusters and Learning Collaboratives encouraged Members to identify and talk about shared priorities across their regions. The Regional Clusters are groups that allow Members and Strategic Partners collaborate to address key issue areas like policy, funding, or youth engagement. The Learning Collaboratives serve as skills-focused workshops that dive deep into topics like research and capacity-building.
The group鈥檚 work is happening in an urgent context. News headlines over the last year illustrate just how present the impacts of climate change are for communities across the country. Devastating storms, , flooding, and more are the backdrop for many CCN Members as they work on developing lasting solutions. Speaking at the 2025 NAM Climate and Health Summit, Blake Ellis, ecotherapy program manager at , recounted her path to addressing local climate change impacts. “My work truly began on November 8, 2018, when the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California history broke out just seven miles east of the town of Paradise,” Ellis shared. Since the 2018 Camp Fire, Ellis said her community of Butte County, California, has experienced several catastrophic wildfires, including the 2024 Park Fire that “burned half a million acres, including 98% of the Big Chico Ecological Reserve where my program is housed.”
In April 2024, the NAM released an interactive map showcasing the CCN Members’ biggest priorities. To build the project, each Member identified the areas where climate change was having the biggest impact on health outcomes in their communities, and the strengths their communities could impart in tackling these challenges head-on.
From wildfires and air quality to flooding and extreme temperatures, CCN Members developed a comprehensive roadmap for progress. They also identified factors like cultural preservation and youth engagement as critical elements to developing strategies that would resonate most in their communities. This project highlights a central tenet of the CCN: plans tailored to communities are more effective than one-size-fits-all approaches.
One of the central components of the CCN is the development of Action Plans. CCN Action Plans are unique to each Member’s community, reflective of the tailored approach that is the Network’s hallmark. Each Member has spent the last year undertaking a rigorous process to outline and develop specific projects for implementation in their communities.
Community-Driven Solutions in Action
Because the communities CCN Members represent have a wide range of priorities, the Action Plans demonstrate that variety of focus areas and scope. Some are aimed at securing funding to sustain or scale already implemented projects while others are designed to get completely new initiatives off the ground. Action Plans feature practical and actionable solutions that can yield real benefits for community residents. The plans are built around human-nature connection, youth engagement, and practical knowledge about improving air quality, among other focus areas. The common thread is that each Action Plan responds to specific community priorities, for example, training residents in California to build affordable air filters or helping neighbors establish green space on public library grounds in Illinois.
Throughout the year, CCN Members raised the Network鈥檚 profile on the national stage. Gabriela Lemus, executive director of , spoke on the Network鈥檚 behalf at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine . Raymond Sweet, green infrastructure/climate coordinator with the Hollygrove Dixon Neighborhood Association, described how the urban heat island effect is creating challenges in his community at an NAM event focused on climate and health research. Cindy Robertson, executive director of , joined a panel at the American Meteorological Society鈥檚 annual meeting to talk about efforts to reduce climate change impacts along the Gulf Coast. And Laprisha Berry Daniels, executive director of , took part in an event hosted by the , a CCN Strategic Partner, where she spoke about connecting environmental justice with academic medicine. Each occasion like these marked an opportunity to amplify community expertise and emphasize the need to listen to and engage with communities on the front line of the climate crisis.
The 2025 NAM Climate and Health Summit demonstrated the critical influence of the CCN. Members were deeply involved in planning the sessions and presented their Action Plans publicly for the first time at the event. During a panel discussion, Members emphasized the fundamental role of community voices in building effective and comprehensive climate solutions. “Satellite data and mathematical models tell us some of what we understand about the climate crisis,鈥 said Max Cawley, director of climate research and engagement at the in Durham, North Carolina. 鈥淲hat it doesn’t tell you is the human experience on the ground. For that we really need to listen to people through their own voice and through their own eyes.”
The Road Ahead
As their second year of work unfolds, CCN Members and Strategic Partners have begun putting their Action Plans to work. After refining over the previous year, the activities launched this past January are expected to be fully implemented next year.
The Regional Clusters and Learning Collaboratives are set for expansion this year. The Regional Clusters will focus on engaging local, state, and federal decision makers. The clusters will also begin facilitating collaboration between community leaders, potential funders, and elected officials to develop strategies and identify resources for new projects. The Learning Collaboratives are ramping up opportunities for knowledge-sharing with regular sessions and broadening their reach to include collaborators beyond the CCN.
Youth engagement is a high priority in the CCN鈥檚 second year of work. Over the course of the first year, the Network has invited speakers and collaborators to discuss strategies for supporting youth involvement at the intersection of climate and health . In its second year, the CCN will convene youth from Member communities and cultivate mentorship and leadership opportunities in climate action.
The relationships built among CCN Members and Strategic Partners and this year鈥檚 Action Plan implementation are strong examples of the Network鈥檚 success and promise for the future. This year, the CCN is starting an external evaluation process to quantify these successes. The evaluation effort will monitor short-term and longer-term outcomes of the Action Plans, as well as build an assessment of the Network鈥檚 overall impact.
As the CCN鈥檚 journey continues this year, the group鈥檚 vision remains clear: communities on the frontlines of climate change hold the expertise needed to build lasting solutions. The program’s collaborative model has shown that when communities lead, powerful solutions to climate-related health challenges are within reach.
