This bill establishes a national system and interagency committee to coordinate federal efforts, fund community resilience projects, and study data gaps to prevent health emergencies and deaths related to extreme heat.
Suzanne Bonamici
Representative
OR-1
The Preventing HEAT Illness and Deaths Act of 2025 aims to combat the nation's leading weather-related killer by establishing a comprehensive federal strategy against extreme heat. The bill creates an Interagency Committee and a National Integrated Heat Health Information System (NIHHIS) within NOAA to coordinate research, data sharing, and preparedness efforts across government agencies. Furthermore, it authorizes significant financial assistance for community projects focused on heat resilience, prioritizing historically disadvantaged areas. The Act also mandates a national study to identify critical gaps in current heat response policies and infrastructure.
New Heat Act Sets Aside $20M Annually for Federal Coordination, Prioritizes Cooling Funds for Low-Income Areas
This bill, officially called the Preventing HEAT Illness and Deaths Act of 2025, is a major federal attempt to get ahead of the growing public health crisis caused by extreme heat. It sets up a coordinated national system, backed by specific funding, designed to improve everything from weather forecasting to local cooling centers. The core idea is that since heat is now the deadliest weather event in the U.S., we need a unified, government-wide strategy to tackle it.
The Federal Government Gets a Heat Action Plan
Right now, when a heatwave hits, you have NOAA doing the weather warnings, the CDC tracking illnesses, and FEMA maybe helping with disaster response—but they often operate in separate lanes. This bill changes that by establishing the National Integrated Heat Health Information System Interagency Committee within NOAA (Sec. 4). This committee pulls together representatives from nearly every relevant federal agency—from Health and Human Services (HHS) and EPA to the Department of Labor (OSHA) and Housing (HUD). Their main job is to create a unified, five-year strategic plan for the entire federal government to reduce heat-related health risks. Think of it as forcing every agency to sit at the same table and figure out their role in keeping people cool and safe.
Better Data, Better Warnings
The Act creates the National Integrated Heat Health Information System (NIHHIS) inside NOAA (Sec. 5). The goal here is simple: to improve the data, forecasts, and warnings about extreme heat and its impact. For the average person, this means the heat warnings you get on your phone or local news should become much more accurate, timely, and specific to your community’s risk factors. The system is also required to make its data public and easily accessible, following principles that ensure the data is findable and reusable. This is huge for researchers and local planners trying to figure out where the biggest risks are, like which neighborhoods lack tree canopy or which hospitals see the most heat stroke cases.
The Money Trail: Funding Local Resilience
Perhaps the most immediate impact for communities is the new grant program established under Section 7. The bill sets aside initial funding starting at $10 million in 2026, ramping up to $30 million by 2029, specifically for community heat resilience projects. This money can be used for tangible, real-world solutions:
- Physical Upgrades: Installing cool roofs, planting trees for shade, and upgrading power grids to handle increased AC demand.
- Community Planning: Setting up cooling centers, developing workplace safety policies for outdoor and indoor workers, and creating localized emergency action plans.
Crucially, the bill mandates that at least 40 percent of the total funding must go to projects in communities with environmental justice concerns or low-income areas (Sec. 7). This directly addresses the finding that historical segregation and lack of investment have left these neighborhoods much hotter and more vulnerable—the urban heat island effect is often worst where people have the fewest resources to cope. If you live in a historically underserved neighborhood, this funding could mean the difference between sweltering streets and new cooling infrastructure.
Figuring Out What We Don’t Know
Before launching all these new programs, the bill mandates a comprehensive, three-year study by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (Sec. 6). This study is designed to identify exactly where our current policies and data collection are failing. They’ll be looking for things like: how many schools and prisons lack air conditioning, how different demographics (race, income, job type) are being hit by heat, and whether medical coding is accurately capturing the full extent of heat-related illnesses. The study will also look at how to better protect workers from high temperatures, both indoors and out. This is the bill’s check-and-balance, ensuring that the new federal programs are based on solid, current data rather than assumptions.