Climate & Health

Climate & Health is HIPHI’s program for the health impacts of climate change in Hawaiʻi, part of our Community Preparedness & Resilience portfolio.

The work starts with a simple reframe: climate change isn’t only an environmental problem, it’s a public health one. Rising heat, wildfire smoke, flooding, and degraded water quality all land on people’s bodies, and they don’t land evenly. Outdoor workers, kūpuna, keiki, and communities with the fewest resources feel it first.

At the center of the program is Climate & Health Hawaiʻi, a statewide network of clinicians, public health professionals, researchers, emergency managers, educators, students, and community leaders. Founded in 2023, it’s convened by HIPHI and guided by a volunteer steering committee. Members meet monthly to share what they’re seeing, and that shared picture drives what we build.

Almost everything we do follows the same arc: listen to communities, find the health concerns that keep coming up, build partnerships across sectors, pilot something practical, evaluate it, and push it toward policy or statewide practice. We also work to build lasting local capacity, so the work continues after any single grant ends.

Learn how climate change is affecting health across Hawaiʻi, from extreme heat and wildfire smoke to flooding and water quality. This overview highlights local public health impacts and the collaborative efforts underway to build healthier, more resilient communities.