The Dane County Office of Energy & Climate Change participated in a multi-year capacity-building program led by the Healthy Wisconsin Leadership Institute (HWLI). The Institute invited us to be part of the process because they recognized that climate change is a public health crisis.
As participants in the HWLI COACH program, we created the Dane County Action Team.
The HWLI process helped us explore the connections between equity, public health and climate change. It also gave us the opportunity to work with amazing people from around the state who were working on other public health issues.
Participating with us in this important work were staff from Public Health Madison & Dane, Centro Hispano, UW-Madison and the nonprofit Center for Resilient Cities. The goal of our team was to ensure everyone in Dane County - regardless of income or ethnicity, urban or rural - have the opportunity to shape the implementation of the Climate Action Plan and benefit from the resulting policies and programs.
While our HWLI program has ended, we continue to look for ways to collaborate with others on the challenge at the nexus of climate-health-equity.
