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Community Leaders Share Challenges Communicating Climate Risks in Greater Boston

Identifying new ways to share information about air quality and extreme heat with community leaders can inform policies that mitigate health inequities and advance local climate adaptation plans.

Amid today’s proliferation of misinformation and disinformation about public health issues, local leaders can serve as trusted figures who have the opportunity to impart evidence-based and culturally relevant information to the communities they serve. 

But many of these leaders in two neighboring cities face challenges in communicating health information to the public, particularly around the subjects of air pollution and extreme heat, according to a new study led by School of Public Health researchers. 

Published in NEW SOLUTIONS: A Journal of Environmental and Occupational Health Policy, this qualitative interview study examined air quality and heat perceptions among 19 local government officials and nonprofit leaders in Chelsea and Boston, as well as the barriers they encounter in acquiring and sharing information about air pollution and extreme heat to the public. 

The community leaders identified three major challenges in communicating air pollution and extreme heat information with the communities: an inability to interpret and apply related federal regulations at a local level; siloed approaches to addressing air pollution and extreme heat; and a lack of access to critical data on both issues.

Understanding these challenges will spur opportunities for solution-oriented, collaborative work among community leaders and other local partners to improve research communication and translation, says study lead author Alina McIntyre (SPH’24), a graduate of SPH’s PhD program in environmental health.

“As public health experts, we talk a lot about extreme heat, air pollution, and other environmental exposures on a broader level,” McIntyre says. “But we learned that there is a real desire among community leaders to better understand and share data on the local health outcomes associated with these exposures, which can be really difficult for them to obtain on a hyper-local level.”

The study was part of C-HEAT—a longstanding collaboration between investigators at SPH and Greenroots—on disparities in heat exposure and related health concerns among residents in Chelsea and East Boston, two environmental justice communities that contain a majority of Hispanic or Latinx populations and a high poverty rate in Chelsea. With older, substandard residential buildings and industrial settings with less green space than other areas around Boston, these communities disproportionately experience “urban heat island” effects and associated health impacts, such as respiratory disease.

Many community leaders expressed concern with their ability to communicate national air quality standards in a meaningful and relevant way to their constituents, suggesting that these guidelines were complex, unclear, or simply outside the scope of their professional role to interpret. In absence of national standards on protection from extreme heat at home or work, they also expressed a need for risk communication guidance around extreme heat that is targeted specifically to their communities.

The leaders also reported difficulty understanding and communicating the combined risks and solutions to air pollution and extreme heat, and they expressed a desire to move away from siloed conversations about the two issues, which overlap widely in terms of the vulnerable populations most affected and the health outcomes that can ensue from disproportionate exposure.

Accessing air quality and heat data was another major challenge. The community leaders reported difficulty weeding through and making sense of a wide variety of sources, from national government websites to state information and other publicly available information.

“There are lots of data sources available, but knowing which one to choose from in a decision-making context is not always obvious,” says study senior author Madeleine Scammell, associate professor of environmental health and co-principal investigator of C-HEAT. “There’s a big difference between regulators making decisions and community leaders trying to make decisions in their particular context, even though it might not be their regulatory responsibility.”

In response to interview questions, community leaders identified several policy changes and other actions that could be implemented at all levels of government to make environmental health data more accessible and applicable to local communities. For example, the Environmental Protection Agency and state agencies could develop tailored messaging and policy explanations for both air pollution and extreme heat. Data portals should also be user-friendly and publicly available so that community members and policymakers alike can access and utilize it easily. Training programs should also be available to community leaders to help them learn and utilize particularly complex data.

In addition to making data more accessible and understandable, support for collaborations among academic institutions, local public health organizations, and community groups to maintain a forum for dialogue, idea-sharing, and innovation that can lead to actionable policymaking. 

McIntyre says the team shared results from this study with the community leaders and received useful feedback.

“Regardless of the topic, I think it is our responsibility as academics to think about how we communicate and disseminate our results for different audiences, and particularly for community-engaged work,” she says. 

The study was coauthored by SPH alum Leila Heidari (SPH’23); Michael Hagen, MPH student and research assistant for C-HEAT; Roseann Bongiovanni, executive director of GreenRoots; Bianca Navaro-Bowman, climate justice manager at GreenRoots; Patricia Fabian, associate professor of environmental health at SPH; and Patrick Kinney, Beverly A. Brown Professor for the Improvement of Urban Health at SPH.