Climate Health Emergency Act of 2025

[Congressional Bills 119th Congress] [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office] [H.R. 4493 Introduced in House (IH)] <DOC> 119th CONGRESS 1st Session H. R. 4493 To direct the Secretary of Health and Human Services to declare a public health emergency in connection with health risks associated with climate change, and for other purposes. _______________________________________________________________________ IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES July 17, 2025 Ms. Dexter (for herself, Ms. Velazquez, Ms. Norton, Ms. Ansari, Ms. Randall, Ms. Barragan, Ms. Jayapal, Mr. Ruiz, Mr. Schneider, Ms. Simon, Mr. Tonko, Ms. Tlaib, Mr. Carbajal, Mr. Bell, and Mr. Thanedar) introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on Energy and Commerce _______________________________________________________________________ A BILL To direct the Secretary of Health and Human Services to declare a public health emergency in connection with health risks associated with climate change, and for other purposes. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. This Act may be cited as the ``Climate Health Emergency Act of 2025''. SEC. 2. FINDINGS. Congress finds the following: (1) In the past decade, the Secretary of Health and Human Services has declared or renewed a public health emergency 120 times. Of those declarations and renewals-- (A) 66 were related to extreme weather events; (B) 14 were related to COVID-19; (C) 2 were related to earthquakes; (D) 2 were related to Mpox; (E) 32 were related to the opioid crisis; and (F) 4 were related to Zika. (2) A preponderance of evidence shows that climate change is driving or, at a minimum, exacerbating extreme weather events and the transmission of infectious diseases. Therefore, climate change can be linked to more than half of all public health emergency declarations over the past decade. (3) For this reason, entities (including the World Health Org