Four past members of former President Joe Biden’s Office of Climate Change and Health Equity say their efforts were never fully funded under the Democratic administration.
The group of officials is out with a new report that serves as a postmortem of their time in the federal government and includes recommendations for how upcoming presidents could reduce the effects of climate change on health care and lower the industry’s emissions.
“We wanted to document the history of what happened for the purpose of informing those in the future,” said co-author Joe McCannon, a policy official in the now-disbanded office. “If there are future administrations who want to focus in on this, there will absolutely be no time to lose in getting to action.”
The Office of Climate Change and Health Equity, or OCCHE, was created via executive order during the first year of the Biden administration. It was established within the office of the assistant secretary for health at the Department of Health and Human Services and never received funding from Congress. Throughout its existence, the office was led by staff members who were technically on loan from other parts of HHS.
