March 20, 2025 - BOSTON - The Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC) has been awarded $125,000 from Doris Duke Foundation to bring together the region’s top experts and leaders on extreme heat, in partnership with the Center for Climate and Health at Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH). “Fostering Collaborations: A Symposium to Advance Equitable Heat Health Actions” will help local state entities and municipal governments, academic and healthcare institutions, community-based organizations, foundations, and advocacy groups in the region bridge the gap between research and practice to reduce the adverse health impacts of extreme heat.

According to the Massachusetts Climate Change Assessment, extreme heat will have some of the most significant impacts, including heat-related illness and mortality, on the Boston region –home to more than a third of the state’s environmental justice communities. Health and societal impacts are expected to exacerbate, particularly for those already heavily burdened, with continued climate change as periods of extreme heat are expected to become more severe and more frequent in Massachusetts.

“With fresh thinking, new voices, and an involved public, we seek to better understand the local and regional context of climate and health through the perspectives of symposium participants,” said Assistant Director of Environmental Planning Van Du. “The goal is to identify gaps and opportunities for prioritizing research agendas and advancing implementation plans in the future. MAPC will help navigate and provide a practiced eye on local assessments, population vulnerability, infrastructure, and availability of resources as lessons learned at the Symposium turn into actions.”

The date, time, and location for the Symposium will be announced soon. Individuals and organizations interested in attending and/or participating can join an email list at mapc.ma/fostering-collaboration-symposium; the webpage will be updated and provide more details as they become available this spring.

Prior to the Symposium, town-hall style events will be held to provide a grassroots, bottom-up planning approach to information gathering and give local stakeholders the opportunity to be part of a panel of experts that will play a critical role in developing the Symposium’s day-long agenda. The BUSPH Center for Climate and Health will support and advise in the planning, organization, and hosting of the Symposium and the pre-event workshops, as well as the synthesis of ideas and opinions that emerge from the Symposium.

“We’re excited to partner with the MAPC and thought leaders to help reduce the health risks of extreme heat across the region through research and implementation of novel solutions,” said Gregory Wellenius, Director of the BUSPH Center for Climate and Health.

“Fostering Collaborations: A Symposium to Advance Equitable Heat Health Actions” is made possible as part the Doris Duke Foundation’s Strengthening Pathways – a national conversation focused on identifying opportunities to better translate innovations from prevention and care research to maximize societal benefits. MAPC and BUSPH’s Symposium is one of 18 occurring across the country in the spring and summer of 2025 to illuminate strategies to connect societal health priorities with research ideas, funding models, policies, and commercial incentives to improve health outcomes.

“The impact of biomedical discovery over the past 75 years has been breathtaking, but our national health research funding paradigm is incomplete,” comments Sindy Escobar Alvarez, Program Director, Medical Research Program at the Doris Duke Foundation. “We have consistently underfunded important research in disease prevention and care that is complementary to molecular-level science, but focuses on keeping people from getting sick – or more sick – in the first place. The Strengthening Pathways Collective and symposia endeavor to advance innovation in health research by bringing people together to think through what we’ll need to improve the societal benefits of research.”

MAPC integrates public health perspectives into planning projects, data collection and analysis, and policy development, and the agency seeks to ensure that the region’s residents, whatever their income, education, or ethnic background, can live the healthiest lives possible. MAPC also recognizes that the effects of climate change systemically impact vulnerable populations inequitably, as demonstrated by our tracking of Climate Vulnerability Indicators across the region, and a number of other climate health programs and projects the agency focuses on.

Launched in 2022, the BUSPH Center for Climate and Health brings together faculty, staff, and students from across the campus to carry out its mission of supporting the transformation of communities to be healthier, more resilient, and more equitable in the face of continued climate change. In partnership with local and global stakeholders, they achieve these goals by catalyzing research that is simultaneously cutting edge and policy-relevant, facilitating the translation of research into public health action, and contributing to training the next generation of researchers and practitioners.