![Heat map of Baltimore showing the Black population is concentrated in two wing-shaped areas to the east and west, while a corridor of whiter, wealthier neighborhoods runs down the center](/sites/g/files/omnuum10826/files/styles/hwp_21_9__1920x825/public/2026-10/Bmore%20Heat%20Mapping%201.jpg?itok=bqd77FUQ) 

 



 

#  How Cross-Agency Collaboration Built Baltimore’s Data Tool for Climate Equity  

 





Baltimore's cross-agency collaboration on extreme heat led to the creation of a layered GIS map to guide equitable cooling interventions for pregnant people and young children.



 

October 21, 2026

 

 

 [ Gabrielle Bello ](/people/gabrielle-bello) 

Extreme heat is a [largely underrecognized public health threat to pregnancy and early childhood development](https://developingchild.harvard.edu/resource-guides/guide-extreme-heat-and-early-childhood-development/) in America. This is especially true in the city of [Baltimore, where residents are particularly sensitive](https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/44fcc0dbe861400da872f3db1a4f9b0f) to health issues related to extreme heat. To address this concern, the Harvard Center for the Developing Child (HCDC) co-organized the Baltimore Extreme Heat and Early Childhood Roundtable series in 2025, selecting representatives from the Department of Planning Office of Sustainability, the Office of Emergency Management, and the Baltimore City Health Department-Bureau of Maternal and Child Health. This collaboration aimed to engage other city government agencies, local academics, and community members. Although these departments’ priorities rarely aligned, the Roundtable revealed their overlapping interests.

One of the most impactful outcomes of the Roundtable series exemplifies what can happen when otherwise siloed city departments work together: the development of a composite heat map that brought together layers of infrastructure, maternal and infant health, city services, and demographic data to create a narrative for the Department of Planning Office of Sustainability’s [Cool Corridors](https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/4420/text) technical assistance project.

## Where Did the Data for Baltimore’s Heat Map Come From?

Prior to the Roundtable series and HCDC’s involvement, the Bureau of Maternal and Child Health had already run preliminary analyses to better understand the relationship between social environmental vulnerability and birth outcomes. “Climate and extreme heat were on our radar,” said Dr. Jana Goins, a maternal and child health epidemiologist at the Baltimore City Health Department. “We had been thinking about the importance of extreme heat on birth outcomes.” Still, the Roundtable played a crucial role in fostering partnerships. While participants recognized the importance of extreme heat, they previously struggled to translate their climate concerns into actionable knowledge at the neighborhood level. This capability resided in the collaboration between the Department of Planning Office of Sustainability and the Bureau of Maternal and Child Health, as the Baltimore City Health Department had access to key data underscoring the link between extreme heat and birth outcomes, the Department of Planning Office of Sustainability had important partnerships in place, and both departments had the need for geographic information systems (GIS) analysis to help inform future projects and funding opportunities.

In constructing the data layers for the map, the team drew much of the information from readily available resources such as the Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators Alliance (BNIA), which aggregates and publishes quality-of-life indicators for Baltimore at the neighborhood level and provided tree canopy coverage and Walk Score data.

Crucial health data, such as preterm birth rates, can be more difficult to obtain, as they are protected health information sourced from state vital statistics. Using this sensitive information, even in shared data projects between city departments, requires a de-identified aggregation process to ensure data remains protected. Despite this, the most significant challenge was obtaining usable, neighborhood-level heat and temperature data. Publicly available heat severity datasets tend to be either too complex to be useful at the neighborhood level or too difficult to work with. The solution, once again, traced back to the Roundtable, where Goins connected with Dr. Darryn Waugh, a professor of earth and planetary sciences at Johns Hopkins University. Waugh had presented at the Roundtable, which is how Goins discovered he was already working on relevant temperature data for Baltimore, as part of the [Baltimore Community Weather Network](https://sites.google.com/view/bcwn-web/). Their collaboration illustrates how agencies don’t always need to fill data gaps through procurement agreements; it can be something as simple and informal as building relationships at community events.

## How Did Baltimore Decide Which Neighborhoods Needed Cooling Infrastructure Most?

After assembling the data, the team, which consisted of Brooke Burgess, a Meharry Medical College MPH fellow, Erica Pinket, a climate and resiliency planner at the Department of Planning Office of Sustainability, Naureen Islam, a data analyst at the Baltimore City Health Department, and Goins, built the map in two steps. First, the team ranked Community Statistical Areas (CSAs), which align with city neighborhoods, by their need for a “cool corridor or cooling pathway to places like grocery stores or childcare centers, specifically for pregnant people and young children,” Goins noted. This maternal and childhood focus grew directly out of the different priorities that attendees identified at the Roundtable.

Second, they layered in relevant assets, such as Judy Centers (early childhood development centers) and Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) clinic sites, to identify and map out walkable connections between people and the services that they need.

## What Did Baltimore’s Heat Map Reveal About Redlining and Health Outcomes?

The map’s results were not surprising, especially to Goins, who frequently analyzes the intersections between social determinants and health outcomes as an epidemiologist; however, they were stark. The neighborhoods ranked as highest-need areas, shaded the darkest blue on the map, closely correlated with formerly redlined communities, a racially discriminatory housing policy that continues to have generational impacts on health outcomes today.

 ![Heat map of Baltimore showing the Black population is concentrated in two wing-shaped areas to the east and west, while a corridor of whiter, wealthier neighborhoods runs down the center](/sites/g/files/omnuum10826/files/2026-10/Bmore%20Heat%20Mapping%201.jpg)

 

“It’s not surprising that the neighborhoods with the darkest blue are all often also neighborhoods with the worst health outcomes,” said Goins. “These are neighborhoods that were redlined, historically, where they were excluded from resources and opportunities for decades, and as a result poverty became concentrated in communities of color.” The map’s pattern lines up with research that is well known in Baltimore: Morgan State University researcher [Lawrence T. Brown’s “Black Butterfly and White L” framework](https://theblackbutterflyproject.com/Book.html), which describes how the city’s Black population is concentrated in two wing-shaped areas to the east and west, historically excluded from investment, while a corridor of whiter, wealthier neighborhoods runs down the center. The heat map functions as visual confirmation of Brown’s well-documented historical pattern of environmental racism.

The Department of Planning Office of Sustainability received a technical assistance award from the Environmental Protection Agency to develop a Cool Corridor demonstration project in East Baltimore. The demonstration project was intended to focus on the area with the greatest need, and the assumption that implementation projects should begin in East Baltimore framed the city’s next steps. However, during the Roundtable discussions, it became clear that the Health Department held crucial pre-term birth rate data the Department of Planning Office of Sustainability could not otherwise access. Since extreme heat exposure directly affects pre-term birth, the Roundtable facilitated a pivotal meeting between these agencies.

With their new data, the Department of Planning Office of Sustainability added a new focus to the Brooklyn/Curtis Bay neighborhood, as it revealed that this area was among the most isolated and under-resourced parts of the southern area. Brooklyn/Curtis Bay further highlights Brown’s framework, as it is isolated, industrial, and water-bound, with minimal existing infrastructure for families. In creating the map, the team found that this neighborhood had just one Judy Center and one federally qualified health center. As a result, the planning team expanded its cool corridor work to this area rather than following its original assumptions.

 ![A heat map of Baltimore, showing very few Judy Centers, WIC sites, and cooling locations in the Brooklyn/Curtis Bay neighborhood](/sites/g/files/omnuum10826/files/2026-10/Untitled%20Design%20%2823%29.png)

 

## How Is Baltimore Turning Its Heat Map into Real Interventions?

Today, the mapping project is part of the [B’more for Healthy Babies (BHB) initiative](https://www.healthybabiesbaltimore.com/), which adopts a life-course approach to maternal and child health by supporting individuals from pregnancy to early childhood to ensure healthy outcomes at every stage. This allows the map’s value to extend beyond identifying where new, grant-funded corridors should go. It also points toward what Goins calls “some smaller things that we can do to work towards keeping families cool” by utilizing existing resources.

BHB is currently thinking about how to make Baltimore’s existing cooling centers more family-friendly. Many cooling centers are in shelters for the unhoused and senior centers, which do not read as accessible or welcoming to families with young children. In response, the Office of Public Health Preparedness, the [Code Red team,](https://www.baltimorecity.gov/homeless/code-red-resources) the Johns Hopkins Center for Communications, and BHB formed a collaborative effort to develop concrete interventions. This includes messaging, such as adding inclusive signage outside cooling centers that welcomes all people and sharing it across BHB networks, and eventually, creating private spaces for breastfeeding and activities for children.

Additionally, the relationships formed at the Roundtable opened doors to climate programming partnerships with institutions such as the Enoch Pratt Free Library and the city’s Judy Centers, allowing them to build extreme-heat education into existing programming. These smaller, more immediate steps allow the city to leverage Roundtable relationships without requiring new funding.

However, one gap remains: there is no existing data on actual walking path usage, which would have helped determine exactly where cooling infrastructure should be routed. Rather than this gap being a dead end, it highlights an opportunity for Baltimore: once the family-friendly cooling centers are operational, Baltimore can collect the travel-pattern data it currently lacks by tracking where families are coming from and how they get there. In turn, these interventions would generate the very data the map initially lacked.

Given these partnerships, the innovation in this mapping project is as much relational as it is technical. For Goins, the map “certainly wouldn’t have happened” without the Roundtable that preceded it. Agencies that rarely had a reason to collaborate found that their work intersected in ways they had not realized. “That’s something that this map represents,” she said. “We were able to leverage collaborations and will continue to do it.” This map functions as an ongoing, iterative collaboration because a data tool is only as good as the cross-agency collaboration and trust that made it possible to build.



 

 

 

##  About the Author 

### Gabrielle Bello

   ![Headshot of Gabrielle Bello](/sites/g/files/omnuum10826/files/styles/hwp_1_1__100x100_scale/public/2026-06/G%20Bello.jpg?itok=Dw1k90C0) 

 

Gabrielle Bello (she/her) is a nonprofit leader, social justice organizer, and community advocate from Chicago committed to advancing equity through housing, global health, and education policy and systemic reform. She serves as director of the Oasis Foundation, and holds leadership roles at YesSheCanCampaign, including director of people & programs and director of public policy & advocacy for its award-winning platform, DISSCHOLARED.

Gabrielle holds a Bachelor of Arts in human services and social justice from The George Washington University. Her work has earned honors including the Diana Award, and she has partnered with the Obama Foundation, Girl’s Opportunity Alliance, London School of Economics (LSE), and others.



 

 



 

 See also:- [ Data Visualization ](/topics/data-visualization)
- [ Environment ](/topics/environment)
- [ Equity ](/topics/equity)
- [ GIS ](/topics/gis)
- [ Health & Human Services ](/topics/health-human-services)
- [ Infrastructure ](/topics/infrastructure)
- [ Public Health ](/topics/public-health)
 
 

 Share on:- [     Facebook ](#)
- [     Twitter ](#)
- [     Linkedin ](#)