Opportunities and challenges in community-led action on weather extremes for health and wellbeing

Towers, Lee and Cronin de Chavez, Anna and Butler, Catherine and Adger, W. Neil and Albers, Patricia Nicole and Walker, Gordon and Cotton, Matthew and Bland, Emma and de Vocht, Frank (2026) Opportunities and challenges in community-led action on weather extremes for health and wellbeing. Health & place, 100: 103697. ISSN 1353-8292

Abstract

Communities play critical roles in mitigating health and wellbeing impacts from weather extremes such as heat, cold and flood events. Community-led actions in affected localities have been shown to be an important part of effective planning and response, particularly in supporting socially and economically marginalised populations. They have also been suggested to face multiple challenges limiting their ability to ensure continuity, scale up, and propagate solutions beyond localities. However, to date the mechanisms by which communities achieve these benefits and experience challenges have not been well-documented or evidenced. Here, we analyse the mechanisms or functions that communities perform to achieve benefits for health and wellbeing in the face of different weather risks, along with the nature of the challenges that shape capacities for delivering and developing them. The study involves in-depth engagement and key informant interviews with actors in three well-established community groups and organisations in the UK who are leading action to reduce the health consequences of heat, floods, and cold risks. The results suggest multiple benefits of community-led action in response to weather risks, revealing common mechanisms through which they achieve them and face constraints. In this, we bring particular focus on the ways that community-led action is embedded in, enabled by, and constrained by power relations.