Equitable Innovation
Racial and ethnic minorities needing medical care will enter sites of care and experience harm from biased medical technologies and interventions. Biases persist across the health innovation ecosystem with drugs, diagnostics, devices, algorithms, and care practices. FAS believes the federal government can play a critical role in correcting bias in technologies and incentivizing future processes for equitable innovation. FAS works to ensure the research and development process is open and fair, looks for ways to support market success for “equitable innovations”, and lifts up new health policy ideas from communities impacted by health inequities.
The White House Climate Policy Office should establish a National Moonshot to Combat Extreme Heat, an all-of-government program to accelerate federal efforts to reduce heat risk.
Without a federal heat stress standard, there is no way to ensure the adoption of heat stress prevention strategies to protect vulnerable workers.
It is imperative for local government officials and city planners to understand who is most vulnerable to the impacts of extreme heat and how temperatures vary throughout a city to develop effective heat mitigation and response strategies.
Extreme heat kills more people on average every year than any other extreme weather event. A major operational barrier to extreme heat response planning is a lack of data-driven decision-making resources, such as impact-based forecasts.