Resource Type: Analysis

The Chicago Department of Public Health’s Cumulative Impact Assessment is a citywide initiative to measure how multiple environmental burdens and social stressors combine to affect health across Chicago neighborhoods. Co-designed with community organizations through an Environmental Equity Working Group, the assessment compiles data on pollution sources, health outcomes, and vulnerability factors to identify communities facing the greatest cumulative impacts. Its findings and recommendations are intended to guide policies on land use, zoning, permitting, enforcement, transportation planning, and other decisions, and it serves as a foundation for Chicago’s broader Environmental Justice Action Plan and proposed cumulative impacts ordinance.