Homeless and vulnerably-housed populations and weather extremes:
Offer outreach programs to establish relationships with homeless populations
Provide information on shelters to homeless populations in advance
Ensure shelter accessibility (e.g., shuttle buses in emergency situations)
Examine heat-health risk perceptions
Educate community entities on local homeless populations to ensure homeless people have access to the available resources
Draw on existing practices in relation to weather extremes (e.g., the guidance from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for cooling centers; Toronto’s extreme heat and cold response plans; Heat–Health Warning Systems)
Increase number of cooling and warming centers
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Housing and Urban planning:
Rely on existing practices to upgrade urban slums (e.g., Health Impact Assessment and Health in All Policies frameworks)
Design low-cost housing by relying on knowledge of local dwellers
Establish clear and consistent definitions of the terms “sheltering” and “housing” in literature focused on disasters
Implement city-based rent control policies as well as mandate or provide subsidies to landlords to improve low-cost rental housing quality
Avoid de-densification, land to low-income urban groups instead
Focus on green infrastructure in urban planning
Pursue research focused on rights-based approaches and in varying contexts
Include homeless populations in disaster planning
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Research:
Examine the relationship between climate change, energy insecurity, and health from the perspective of the energy–health–justice nexus
Identify racial and gender-based injustices
Consult those working in communities during research development
Cover a wider range of countries
Focus on systematic data collection and on intervention, with qualitative and in-depth comparative studies
Evaluate the effectiveness of existing strategies
Integrate practices based on the available evidence
Examine individual and structural responses that enable resilience
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Other:
Commit funds from high to low-income countries
Ensure local governments’ willingness to work with low-income groups
Use technology for climate modeling, the development of warning systems, and vulnerability zonation
Use “health” as a rallying point
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