About the Association
An independent, non-governmental network that convenes the people and organizations confronting extreme heat — aligning their work into one coordinated movement.
Our vision
Our mission
Uniting the heat community behind evidence-based action that protects people from the harms of extreme heat.
Extreme heat is the deadliest weather hazard in the United States, and its toll is rising. The expertise to meet it already exists — across clinicians, researchers, urban planners, engineers, workers' advocates, and policymakers. What the field lacks is connection.
Today that expertise largely sits in silos. Where the field does convene, gatherings tend to focus on a single slice of the problem — policy, governance, or worker safety — with few bridges to the related areas of heat work that bear directly on them. Opportunities to connect are routinely missed.
The field is also carried, to a remarkable degree, by a small number of dedicated individuals. Their commitment is a genuine strength, but it leaves the network fragile: when someone retires, changes roles, or turns to another issue, the relationships they held together can quietly dissolve — because those connections were personal rather than institutional.
The Association exists to change that. We provide the durable, institutional structure that holds the field together — convening across the whole of the heat response rather than any one corner of it, so that collaboration endures beyond any single person, organization, or moment.
As a convener rather than a service provider, our work concentrates where a network adds the most value.
Bringing the field together so effort is coordinated rather than duplicated.
Identifying critical research gaps and connecting institutions with the communities they serve to close them.
Surfacing what demonstrably works and helping it spread quickly across the field.
Helping funding and support reach the interventions and communities where they do the most good.
Building a clear, consistent public voice so the field speaks on heat with one message.
The Association is designed around a balanced, traditional non-profit structure: an Executive Director and staff lead the organization with the counsel of a distinguished Executive Advisory Council, and subject-matter committees do the collaborative work beneath them.
The Executive Director and staff are supported by an Executive Advisory Council of distinguished leaders from across the heat field, who bring strategic counsel, deep expertise, and national perspective to the Association's work. The Association's standing committees — where members, practitioners, researchers, and partners collaborate — develop the national reports and recommendations it publishes under its own name. National convenings bring members and committees together, philanthropy and investors partner with the standing committees, and local, state, and federal partners advise them as expert advisory groups.
The Association is led by its Executive Director and staff, with the counsel of an Executive Advisory Council of distinguished leaders from across the heat field.
Executive Director
Title and background
A short biography of the Executive Director will appear here — their experience, their work on extreme heat, and what they bring to leading the Association.
Executive Advisory CouncilDistinguished leaders who bring strategic counsel, deep expertise, and national perspective to the Association's work. Members will be announced as the Council is formed.
Title, organization
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The following committees are anticipated as the Association launches. Each is a working space where practitioners, researchers, and partners in that area collaborate and help shape the Association's national reports. Committee areas are planned and may evolve.
Because members can take part in more than one committee, expertise flows between areas that rarely share a room. A few illustrations:
In practice
A physician recognized for treating heat illness in outdoor workers can help shape the Healthcare committee's work on clinical preparedness while informing the Occupational Heat committee's work on protecting workers — carrying hard-won insight directly between two fields that seldom meet.
In practice
A foundation exploring where to make a difference on heat can coordinate with its peers in the Financing committee while sitting in on the research, policy, and implementation committees — seeing for itself where the real funding gaps lie, and turning a single investment into a field-wide strategy.
The Association operates under the fiscal sponsorship of an established 501(c)(3) public charity. Contributions made in support of the Association are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law and are administered by the fiscal sponsor consistent with the Association's charitable purpose.