Extreme heat is straining power grids, threatening health, and disrupting daily life across the Southeastern United States. Communities need both immediate and lasting solutions—strategies that protect health, strengthen infrastructure, and are tailored for local contexts.
Through the Cooling Communities project, Duke University researchers work alongside faith leaders to co-create scalable, locally driven resilience solutions grounded in evidence and supported by robust partnerships.
Phase One: Laying the Groundwork
A Cooling Communities event in March 2025 highlighted the promise of churches as resilience hubs.
With initial support from The Duke Endowment, Phase One of Cooling Communities has helped build the foundation for new community resilience approaches by:
- Partnering with rural faith leaders in the Carolinas to understand extreme heat’s impacts on their communities—and what they’re already doing to protect people’s health.
- Exploring innovative tools, including an early model for parametric insurance, designed to help households manage energy costs during heat waves.
- Testing strategies to address energy poverty, strengthen social safety nets, and establish trusted pathways for communication about heat risks.
These efforts have demonstrated the value of combining community perspectives with innovative policy and financing concepts, surfacing lessons to help broaden impact in Phase Two. Phase One partners included Duke Divinity School and Interfaith Power and Light (North Carolina and South Carolina).
Phase Two: Expanding Capacity with the Cooling Communities Network
Turning Community Centers Into Heat-Ready Lifelines
Learn about the inspiration for the Cooling Communities model, its focus on rural communities, and why it centers local leadership.
With support from the Rockefeller Foundation, Phase Two of Cooling Communities is developing a network of community leaders across rural North Carolina who can learn from and collaborate with one another while undertaking heat resilience efforts.
Inspired by examples like New Wine Christian Fellowship, Cooling Communities ultimately seeks to advance development of trusted community sites that have solar and battery storage, enabling them to stay open even when the electric grid fails. This backup power and other equipment can allow sites to provide cooling, device charging, refrigeration for medicines, communications, and door-to-door wellness checks.
To ready the way for this vision and support community leaders with near-term heat resilience measures, Phase Two focuses on:
Want Updates on the Network?
Faith-based organization leaders in North Carolina can sign up for project updates—as can others.
- Strengthening local capacity through training, partnerships, and shared resources.
- Linking efforts into connected networks for mutual support.
- Creating scalable models and finance mechanisms that other communities can adapt.
While Phase One has been exploratory—testing tools, building partnerships, and surfacing needs—Phase Two is about expanding capacity and peer-to-peer support. It creates the connective tissue needed to strengthen and coordinate resilience efforts, readying the way for future investment in infrastructure.
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Cooling Communities: Strategic Partnerships for Heat Resilience in the Carolinas
Extreme heat is an escalating public health and economic threat, particularly in rural, low-income communities across the Southeastern United States. In these areas, aging infrastructure, high energy burdens, and chronic health disparities intersect to create acute vulnerability during periods of excessive heat. Cooling Communities is a seed initiative that brings together community leadership, trusted faith-based institutions, and financial innovation to explore scalable, locally rooted strategies for heat resilience. Rather than prescribing solutions, the initiative focuses on listening, cocreation, and building the foundations for long-term capacity. It is grounded in the belief that effective heat resilience must be community-informed, operationally sustainable, and responsive to local needs.
