By David Leathers
Director, National Commission on Climate and Workforce Health

As the National Commission on Climate and Workforce Health nears its first birthday, it’s clear that right now is the time for businesses to understand and manage current and future climate-related risks to their workforce.

Late last year, I joined the Health Action Alliance team to serve as the first director of the Commission. In these short few months, we've seen the impacts of extreme weather and heat on workers, businesses, and communities across the country. Western North Carolina continues to recover from Hurricane Helene. Urban firestorms and their fallout are engulfing Los Angeles County. We learned that not only was 2024 the hottest year on record, but that this January was the hottest January ever, too.

These disasters illustrate how human health is increasingly threatened by heat, fires, storms, and other perils. And yet these impacts are not yet widely managed as a risk to workforce health. With so many shifting opportunities and challenges, many business leaders have not had time to prioritize climate impacts as a multidimensional and workforce-centric business risk, with likely impacts to productivity, resilience, and success.

That gap — the widening space between business preparedness and intensifying climate-related threats — is the reason for the Commission. We’ve brought together a growing powerhouse group of business, sustainability, and health leaders who understand that this is a complex problem without just one solution. The Commission acknowledges that solving these challenges requires leaders to collaborate on building and disseminating proven strategies that strengthen workforce resilience in a changing world.

Our Strategic Focus

To do this, we have honed our strategy to focus on the following pillars of work: 

Raise Awareness of this issue as an underrecognized risk and help employers understand the impact to their people and business.

• If we’re successful, most business leaders will recognize there is an increasing risk to their most important asset — their people — and build internal business cases to understand and manage that risk.

Empower Employers with proven strategies and adaptable tools and tactics to protect workers.

• If we’re successful, more business leaders — especially those operating in areas of future climate risk — take action now to implement proven strategies relevant to their industry and workforce.

Shape the Future by identifying and accelerating new products, technologies, and policies that leading businesses will use in the future to protect their workers.

• If we’re successful, we will accelerate the development, demand, and adoption of new innovations we don’t yet need at scale — but will. 

To make progress on these ambitious goals, you’ll see us increasing our engagement with businesses through conferences, media, and other events. We will continue to amplify and build new resources to help employers take immediate action. And we are identifying insights from global trends and examples that U.S. business leaders can learn from and adapt for their own workforces.

You Can Help Fill This Gap by Taking Action

We are at the beginning of a long journey as business leaders work to understand how our changing climate is impacting not only their physical assets and operations, but also their workforce. 

Don’t just take it from me; in January, Commission Co-Chairs Susan Potter and Sen. Bill Frist wrote: “…Now is the critical moment for the business community to lean in and collaborate with experts to develop strategies to protect workers as we adapt to these growing challenges.”

That’s what this year is about for us: taking action. We don’t have all the answers, but we have many, and we are building a movement of businesses and experts to find the rest. I would encourage you to join us in this journey and take action today: 

• Explore and share our resources for employers and employees, spanning topics from mental health to wildfires.
• Sign up for the Commission’s newsletter, which features tips, insights, and resources.
• Follow the Health Action Alliance’s LinkedIn, which features updates from the Commission and HAA’s other programs
• Get in touch at climate@healthaction.org. If you want to be part of the solution to this massive challenge, let us know. We are seeking experts and partners to grow the Commission and the reach and impact of our work.

The time to act is now. Thank you for joining us in this work.

‍David Leathers is Director of Program Strategy at the Health Action Alliance, where he oversees strategy and operations for the National Commission on Climate and Workforce Health. Previously, he led standards implementation initiatives for Certified B Corps at B Lab and managed impact measurement for Deloitte’s global World Impact program. He has international experience in Egypt and Jordan and is based in New York City.

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