Heat is the deadliest climate-related hazard, with disproportionate impacts on low-income, elderly, and historically marginalized communities. As climate change intensifies, summer temperatures and the frequency of extreme heat events continue to rise, exacerbating health risks for vulnerable populations – particularly in neighborhoods with inadequate tree canopy, limited access to open space, and poor housing conditions.

Extreme heat is a public health crisis. It doesn’t have to be this way.

Rebuild by Design is working with pilot communities on a coordinated and measurable effort to eliminate preventable heat-related deaths, modeled after the successful Vision Zero campaign for traffic safety. The approach centers the people who are most likely to die from a heat event, and develops a strategy to reach, educate, and assist the people most in need.

Just as Vision Zero reframed traffic fatalities as a systems failure – not individual missteps – Heat Zero aims to treat heat deaths as both foreseeable and preventable through design, data, and community infrastructure. 

Image above: Chris Yarzab, Wikicommons, Right: T.R.U.S.T LA Workshop, March 2026