Cooling Dwight

Children wedging T-shirts into a splash pad drain to stay cool, a husband with multiple sclerosis hospitalized by neighborhood heat, families seeking refuge in air-conditioned grocery stores and buses are the lived consequences of decades of disinvestment in a community's built environment.

When Yale School of Public Health (YSPH) researchers partner with New Haven’s Dwight neighborhood residents to document these realities and translate them into policy recommendations, they are intervening in cycles of harm that have compounded for generations and developing systems-level solutions for a healthier society.

During the hottest summer days in the Dwight neighborhood, the kids at Kensington Playground improvise a way to stay cool — wedging T-shirts along the splash pad drain to hold the water back, forming a makeshift pool.

Kensington Playground is one of the few places in the Dwight community where residents can escape extreme heat. A cluster of trees shades the play area, lowering temperatures by as much as 5 degrees Fahrenheit, enough to offer respite during sweltering afternoons. “By far, it’s the coolest place in the neighborhood,” said Pat Wallace, a longtime Dwight community advocate. “No matter how hot it is, you feel a sense of relief.”

Outside the playground, temperatures rise quickly. The Dwight neighborhood lies just west of downtown New Haven and is adjacent to Yale University. Much of the community is encompassed by the Dwight Street Historic District, recognized for its 19th- and early 20th-century residential architecture. The community consists largely of modest homes and multi-family buildings with occasional restaurants and small neighborhood convenience stores mixed in.

The blocks surrounding Kensington Playground have high building densities, few green spaces, and no bodies of water. These conditions trap warmth and amplify the heat.

“The infrastructure of the neighborhood is just not built to help people adapt,” said Alix Rachman, MPH ’23, climate change program administrator at YSPH. “Extreme heat is a public health equity issue,” Rachman said. “And structural barriers prevent effective adaptation.”

The Dwight study didn't begin with researchers deciding what the neighborhood needed. It began with listening. Rachman helped lead YSPH’s Dwight Urban Heat Study, collecting input from 270 residents and 36 focus group participants to inform future heat-mitigation efforts. Three out of four survey participants identified hot weather as a major concern. Nearly half reported that their homes became extremely hot.

The interdisciplinary study was supported by a Yale Planetary Solutions seed grant and led by the Yale School of Public Health’s Center on Climate Change and Health (YCCCH), in partnership with the Yale Urban Design Workshop (YUDW) at the Yale School of Architecture.

Funding was provided through Yale Planetary Solutions’ Climate Impact Innovations Fund, supported by generous donors and now called the Three Cairns Climate Impact Innovation Fund. It serves as a catalyst to encourage Yale faculty and the broader Yale community to focus their research, scholarship, and expertise on climate solutions.

Members of the design workshop brought decades of experience working with Dwight residents, including the Dwight Central Management Team and the Greater Dwight Development Corporation. Together, YCCCH and YUDW reached out to residents to ensure their experiences and ideas shaped the project.

Extreme heat poses significant health risks for community members. Seventy percent of survey participants reported at least one physical symptom on hot days — fatigue, headaches, dizziness, or nausea — while focus group members described emotional strain, including heightened aggression, anxiety, and exhaustion. The City of New Haven’s Extreme Heat Protocols activate when temperatures exceed 90 degrees for two to three days or longer, triggering the opening of city cooling centers.

“The neighborhood infrastructure compounds health risks,” Rachman said, particularly for older adults, children, people with medical conditions, unhoused individuals, and menopausal women, whose hormonal changes can make it harder to regulate body temperature. Limited shade at bus stops and heat trapped in older buildings amplify these risks.

For Wallace, the danger of extreme heat became apparent when she and her husband moved to Dwight about 40 years ago. Their building lacked air conditioning, and the thick brick walls allowed cool air to slip out and heated air to slip in. “It was incredibly hot,” she said. Her husband has multiple sclerosis and is highly heat sensitive. “The heat in this neighborhood put him in the hospital,” said Wallace, who still lives in the building.

Rising energy costs and limited cooling options add to Dwight residents’ struggle to cope with extreme heat. Forty percent of survey participants reported having no air conditioning; among those who did, many said it provided little relief or was too expensive to use. One renter noted that their landlord provided only a box fan.

Nonetheless, the community copes in creative ways. During focus groups, residents said when they are indoors on hot days, they wear lighter clothing, turn off appliances, and eat foods that don’t require cooking. When indoor spaces become unbearable, many head outside or to public buildings, such as a local library. Wallace noted, “If you walk around this neighborhood in the summertime, everybody is out on their porches or out and about. Inside is hot, hot, hot.”

Many people said they also seek relief on air-conditioned buses or in grocery stores, though they are sometimes asked to leave if they linger too long.

New Haven has eight cooling centers, but none are located within Dwight. The nearest facilities are half a mile away, exceeding the maximum distance recommended by researchers. Over two — thirds of survey respondents said they would use a cooling center if one were in their neighborhood.

YSPH researchers embarked on the Dwight project to help residents document the impact of urban heat. The researchers worked closely with community members in conducting the study and later, in identifying community-informed solutions to the problem, Rachman said.

“Meeting residents where they are, rather than pushing what we think they need, is the most equitable way to guide adaptation strategies,” Rachman said.

The interventions residents identified — more trees, shaded bus stops, water play areas, cooling centers, energy bill assistance — are not luxuries. They are the basic infrastructure of a livable neighborhood, protecting residents against heat exposure. Data show that such exposure can cause heat exhaustion, worsen cardiovascular health, and exacerbate chronic diseases.

Trees planted today lower temperatures for decades. Shaded bus stops make public transit more viable, reducing car dependence and emissions. Cooling centers keep vulnerable people out of hospitals. Each intervention, implemented at scale, reduces the burden on health systems while improving quality of life in ways that ripple across generations.

In April, Rachman spoke for the community in support of Dwight residents. In testimony to New Haven’s Board of Alders Finance Committee, Rachman cited the study’s findings and the evidence showing that heat exposure can negatively impact human health, urging officials to continue funding the city’s Office of Climate and Sustainability.

Turning the study's recommendations into reality requires coordinated policy and resources, she said. “The biggest factor is funding. Implementing any solution, even at a local level, really requires public investment,” Rachman said.

Equally important is landlord engagement: many landlords have little incentive to improve their properties, and tenants cannot make changes themselves, or access programs intended for homeowners. “Finding that middle ground to require landlords to make changes is essential,” Rachman added.

YSPH is working with Dwight community organizations to distribute their Community Report to residents and policymakers. “We hope this will stimulate action, which must arise from the community, not from researchers,” said Dr. Robert Dubrow, MD, PhD, professor emeritus and senior research scientist at YSPH, and the founding faculty director of the Yale Center on Climate Change and Health. “However, we will be there to provide support in the form of consultation and testimony.”

“We do the research, but we also need to act as translators — making our findings digestible and useful,” Rachman said. “We must speak up when possible — providing testimony during legislative sessions and encouraging residents to engage in policy discussions.”

What YSPH is building in Dwight is not just a cooler neighborhood. It is a model for how academic public health institutions can serve as genuine partners in community resilience, now and as climate change makes extreme heat an increasingly urgent threat to human health everywhere.

For residents like Pat Wallace, other families across Dwight, and the children at Kensington Playground, the opportunity to stay cool during the hottest days will be a welcome relief.

The study was conducted by Saket Malhotra and Andrei Harwell of the Yale Urban Design Workshop at the Yale School of Architecture; Alixandra Rachman, Carmen Muñiz‑Almaguer, and Robert Dubrow of the YSPH Department of Environmental Health Sciences and the Yale Center on Climate Change and Health; and Annie Harper of the Department of Psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine.

Read more about the Dwight Urban Health Study →