Biden climate change health office has yet to get funding

President established group early in tenure, but Congress has not provided resources

WASHINGTON — A week after taking office, President Joe Biden signed a sweeping executive order that established a new federal office focused on addressing the health consequences of climate change, which disproportionately affects poor communities and communities of color.

The administration had grand plans for the office. For the first time, it would marshal the full powers of the federal government to help Americans sweltering under deadly heat waves, breathing in dangerous wildfire smoke, fleeing from massive flooding and struggling to access clean drinking water amid a historic drought parching the West.

“Many climate and health calamities are colliding all at once,” Biden said at the time, adding, “Just like we need a unified national response to COVID-19, we desperately need a unified national response to the climate crisis.”

But nearly a year after the Department of Health and Human Services launched the Office of Climate Change and Health Equity, Congress has not provided any funding, forcing it to operate without any full-time staff at a time of worsening climate disasters across the country, according to interviews with four officials there.

“Right now, it is an unfunded office,” said Adm. Rachel Levine, the U.S. assistant secretary for health. “What we really need is funding to have a permanent staff.”

In his budget plan released in March, Biden requested $3 million to support eight full-time positions in the climate office. The government funding package that passed the House last week would deliver the full $3 million. So would the spending bill that the Senate Appropriations Committee unveiled Thursday.

However, the government spending bills lawmakers released last year also included $3 million for the climate office — until that money was stripped from the legislation at the last minute as part of an agreement brokered behind the scenes. That has fostered apprehension among officials in the climate office.

“Funding isn’t final until it’s final,” said a Health and Human Services official, who spoke anonymously.

Without full-time staff, the climate office has received personnel on loan from other federal agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health. But those employees could be recalled to their home agencies if the office does not receive funding in the coming months.

John Balbus, interim director of the climate office, lamented that there is a debate over funding his work in the first place.

“It shouldn’t be controversial to set up an office to make sure our communities and health systems are ready to face extreme weather threats being made more frequent and common by climate change,” Balbus said. “The 200 leading health journals in the world have made it clear that climate change is the greatest threat to public health of this century. This issue needs focused attention now.”

In recent years, the medical community has increasingly recognized climate change as a leading threat to public health. The Lancet, a top medical journal, warned last year global warming is set to become the “defining narrative of human health” — triggering food shortages, deadly disasters and disease outbreaks that would dwarf the toll of the coronavirus pandemic.

Rising temperatures have led to higher rates of heat illness, causing farmworkers to collapse in fields and elderly people to die in their homes. Smoke from wildfires has infiltrated the lungs and bloodstreams of people hundreds of miles away. Extreme droughts have caused crops to fail, triggering severe hunger and food insecurity for the world’s most vulnerable populations.

These effects have fallen hardest on low-income neighborhoods and communities of color, which are disproportionately exposed to dirty air, tainted water and other environmental threats, according to a growing body of research.

In San Jose, Calif., for instance, temperatures are 6 or 7 degrees higher in poor neighborhoods that lack tree cover, making it harder for residents to cool down during a heat wave. In Albuquerque, officials have recorded a 17-degree difference between the coolest and hottest parts of the city on summer afternoons. The higher temperatures pose the greatest risk to homeless individuals and those who lack access to air conditioning, said Kelsey Rader, the city’s sustainability officer.