Climate change is killing Americans. Heat now causes more deaths than hurricanes, tornadoes, or floods in most years, creating a new public health threat. But health departments aren’t equipped to respond.
FIJ grant recipient Bridget Hickey and colleagues Ali Raj, Dean Russell, Elisabeth Gawthrop, and Veronica Penney from Columbia Journalism Investigations used data, reviewed thousands of pages of government records, and interviewed over one hundred people to reveal how a decade of neglect and politics undermined the CDC’s fight against climate change.
The story was produced in collaboration with the Center for Public Integrity and co-published in The Guardian. It has been cited by nearly a dozen publications, including Mother Jones, The Nation, and Grist.