New federal office to protect vulnerable communities from climate health threats
H.R. 4515 — Climate Change Health Protection and Promotion Act of 2025 · Filed by Doris Matsui (D-CA) · 24 cosponsors · Introduced Jul 17, 2025 · Referred to committee
Your members of Congress
Enter a ZIP to see where your representative and both senators stood on this bill.
Looked up on this device — your ZIP is never stored on our servers.
What it does
This bill creates a new Office of Climate Change and Health Equity within the Department of Health and Human Services to coordinate federal efforts addressing how climate change affects public health. The Office will develop a national strategic action plan, track climate-related health threats, support vulnerable communities, and work with other agencies to prepare health systems for climate impacts like heat waves, infectious diseases, and air pollution.
Why we flagged it
The bill's core function is establishing a new federal office and planning mechanism to address climate-related health impacts. It is a straightforward public health coordination and capacity-building measure with no hidden commercial or private-sector carve-outs.
What the text implies
- The bill requires federal agencies to assess how existing laws and policies affect climate health outcomes, potentially triggering review and revision of unrelated statutes across multiple departments.
- The national strategic action plan may recommend new regulations or policies to address health-system gaps, creating downstream regulatory authority not explicitly enumerated in the bill itself.
- Emphasis on health-sector greenhouse gas emissions tracking and reduction could indirectly influence hospital operations, supply chains, and procurement practices nationwide.
Who it affects
The bill establishes infrastructure to protect public health from climate-related threats and prioritizes vulnerable populations (low-income, communities of color, Indigenous communities, medically underserved areas) who face disproportionate climate health risks. It creates transparency through mandatory reporting and scientific assessment without imposing new costs on ordinary citizens.
Named in the bill
Department of Health and Human Services, Environmental Protection Agency, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Indian Health Service, Department of Labor, Department of Defense, Department of State, Department of Veterans Affairs, National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, Office of Climate Change and Health Equity
Where it stands
24 cosponsors: 24 Democrats.
- Jul 17, 2025 — Introduced · Congress.gov: “Introduced in House”
- Jul 17, 2025 — Referred to House Committee on Energy and Commerce · Congress.gov: “Referred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce”
Dates and quoted wording are Congress.gov's action record; the timeline shows status changes, not every procedural step.
Money around this bill
2 lobbying clients named this bill on 3 disclosure filings across 2 quarters, Dec 2025 to Jun 2026. Those filings disclosed $396,600 in lobbying spend. A filing names 79 bills on average, so that figure is what each filing reported, not a share belonging to this bill.
More lobbying clients named this bill than 41% of bills with at least one filing.
Doris Matsui, the sponsor, reported $1,026,688 in PAC receipts in the 2026 cycle.
- Earthjustice Action — $376,600 on 2 filings
- West Harlem Environmental Action, Inc. — $20,000 on 1 filing
Lobbying Disclosure Act filings through Jul 20, 2026. A filing shows who paid to lobby on a bill it names, not what changed.
How this was measured
Analysis — Quorum's AI read the full bill text on Jun 8, 2026; transparency and hidden-provision scores are compared against the median of 16,222 analysed bills.
Status and sponsors — Congress.gov's bill record — actions, committee referrals and cosponsors — loaded nightly. The timeline shows status changes, not every procedural action.
Money — Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act filings whose specific-issue field names this bill for quarters ending Dec 2025 to Jun 2026. A filing's amount is reported whole beside the median number of bills a filing names; it is never divided across them. PAC receipts are FEC-reported contributions to the sponsor's candidate committee in the 2026 cycle.
As of — lobbying records through Jul 20, 2026 · page rendered 2026-10-20.
“New federal office to protect vulnerable communities from climate health threats” QuorumCivic. https://share.quorumcivic.app/bill/119/hr4515 Report an error
The week in bills
One email, Sunday: what Congress passed, what it changed, and who paid.
One link arrives to confirm the address. It is used for this email and nothing else, and every issue carries an unsubscribe link.