16HEALTH Centering Community Values in Tree Planting and Heat-Related Health Interventions: Conversations with Community Leaders

Climate change is resulting in more frequent and intense heat waves, therefore increasing heat-related morbidity and mortality. One long-term solution to reducing heat in cities is by expanding the urban forest. However, the distribution of trees is not equal between neighborhoods, often resulting in low-income and communities of color having the least tree cooling benefits and the highest risk of heat vulnerability. Little is known about which tree species are best at cooling, and the ideal spatial arrangement of trees to reduce heat-related health issues. Furthermore, it is not well understood how a tree species planting plan can be climate justice-focused and co-created with communities. Therefore, our team is developing a tree-enhanced urban climate model (TE-UCM) to explore the role specific tree species play in reducing heat exposure at finely grained spatiotemporal scales. Alongside this work, our team is exploring how an urban greening and heat intervention can be implemented with community values at the center of decision-making. We understand that community engagement is a long-term commitment, so in the Winter of 2024, we started our community engagement by having conversations with six community members in Harlem, a heat-vulnerable neighborhood in New York City, to discuss how to effectively co-create a tree planting intervention with communities. We qualitatively analyzed conversations using a grounded theory approach. The following themes emerged: engagement should be community-specific, flexible, transparent, and intergenerational; research should align with common goals of the community (i.e., improving community health); tree work and research should foster community building; and education goes both ways (community to researcher, researcher to community). These themes have and will continue to inform our research process as we continue to engage with community stakeholders and as we build tree planting scenarios that are justice focused. Our results can also inform other evidence-based urban greening programs that aim to improve health equity and environmental justice. Based on our emerging themes, we have prioritized meeting community members where they are at, both literally and figuratively. This looks like engaging community members in person and making sure messaging is applicable to community audiences. In our ongoing conversations, we have emphasized the importance of knowledge exchange between ourselves and community members, and we are working to hold up community members’ lived experiences and knowledge to the same standard as our own. Also, we hope that as our research program expands, we will be able to partake in intergenerational engagement and education, which will not only help with intergenerational community cohesion, but also inspire the next generation of stewards in our changing climate.