During high heat, people have to make impossible choices: between eating or overheating, working in dangerous conditions or losing a paycheck, telling kids they can’t go outside or risking heat illness. Local governments and their partners are bearing the cost of increasing demand for social services, public safety, and health care. Aging infrastructure not built for extreme temperatures is buckling in the heat.

Policy needs to catch up to the scale of the extreme heat problem, and fast. To do so, policymakers at all levels will need to make their communities “heat safe” by (1) reducing heat risk in the places where people spend the most time and (2) preparing social and physical infrastructure to handle rising heat. Heat-safe communities are places that don’t just survive but thrive, and where people and families can grow and prosper.

Addressing rising heat will take all of us. Already, almost [150] organizations and government offices and over [150] experts have committed to supporting the Agenda. Together, we can create heat-safe homes, workplaces, schools, childcare facilities, and communities – the backbone of a heat-ready nation.