Seen and Unseen: How Climate Change Shapes Who Gets to Be Healthy
This series of briefs dives deeper into pressing challenges we face now, how some communities are impacted more than others, and ways communities and others are responding.
Advancing health equity means ensuring that everyone—regardless of race, ethnicity, income, or geography—has a fair and just opportunity to be as healthy as possible. That work depends on understanding how climate change is reshaping our communities and lives.
How Does Climate Change Shape Who Gets to Be Healthy?
Climate change is already affecting our daily lives in ways that are easy to see, like more frequent and severe extreme weather events, and ways that are harder to notice, like making homes uninsurable or forcing people from their homes. All of these changes, big and small, seen and unseen, shape our wellbeing and our chances to be healthy.
The impacts of climate change—compounded by changes in federal policies—harm everyone, but they also deepen longstanding health inequities for communities of color and people with lower incomes.
The loss of key federal data makes the picture even harder to see. Without reliable information to track these impacts, it’s harder to respond to them.
Even as federal resources and action diminish, there are steps philanthropy, community organizations, and local and state governments can take to fill in the gaps.
Key Findings
- Communities are filling the gap. Keeping the evidence of climate change public, accessible, and community-led makes the health impacts visible and actionable.
Even as federal data systems are cut, communities, researchers, and state and local organizations are stepping up and building solutions for the people they know and the places they love. Across the country, a net work of community-driven and regional data is growing—and it’s proving essential.
Taking action
This moment has highlighted just how im portant local, community-centered data collection truly is, what we stand to lose, and the path forward. Philanthropy, govern ment at all levels, and the public health and research communities all have roles to play, including:
- Defending data: Protect scientific integrity, preserve existing environmental and public health datasets, and support the people who produce them.
- Investing in local capacity: Fund community organizations, regional hubs, and universities to build and sustain the tools and resources to collect and share state and local data.
- Making data public and accessible: Ensure that the evidence generated by local data collection reaches
decisionmakers and remains available to communities. - Centering equity in every system: Design every data collection effort to capture the experiences of those most harmed and most vulnerable to
environmental risk. - Restoring federal systems: Remain vigilant for every opportunity to
rebuild, restore, and improve federal and public healthdata infrastructure.
- People with lower incomes and communities of color are harmed the most by extreme weather. States are taking action to help families before, during, and after weather events.
For decades, the United States has relied on a familiar cycle: Disaster strikes, local communities rally, the federal government and private insurers provide funding, and communities rebuild, often in the same way and in the same place. Today, disasters are more frequent and stronger—and government funding and insurance to recover is no longer reliable.
The consequences of these decisions by the federal government and insurers
will ripple through the nation for years to come. For example:
- Taking Away Our Ability to Plan Ahead for Disasters: Federal agencies
like the National Weather Service (NWS), which provide weather forecasts and critical warnings, have faced drastic staffing and funding cuts since the start of 2025. These changes leave some offices completely inoperative, while others don’t have the staff they need for core work like warning communities of approaching disasters. Additionally, H.R. 1, which passed in 2025, cut hundreds of millions of dollars from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration weather forecasting and public alert programs. Together, these cuts further degrade the infrastructure that gives communities advanced warning of what is coming. - Gutting Programs to Help People Rebuild: The Federal Emergency
Management Agency (FEMA) has long been the agency tasked with helping communities and families rebuild, but it’s being dismantled and politicized. As a result, many states, communities, and homeowners are left to foot the bill themselves after a disaster hits. - Disappearing Private Insurance in Some Places: Private property insurers are fleeing disaster-prone areas or drastically increasing premiums to unaffordable rates for people at all income levels, but especially those with lower incomes, leaving many without
reliable, comprehensive insurance coverage. Since 2020, insurance rates
in California have risen as much as 84%, and seven of the state’s twelve
largest insurers have reduced or stopped writing new policies altogether. - Shutting Down Programs to Help Communities Prepare: Programs like FEMA’s Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities
(BRIC) program, which intends to help communities prepare for today’s storms, are at a standstill, leaving millions at risk during peak storm season and leaving us unprepared in the future.
Conclusion
Even as federal resources and action diminish, there are steps philanthropy, community organizations, and local and state governments can take to fill in the gaps.
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