We are working with the County of Los Angeles on their first County Heat Action Plan (CHAP). As a separate but related part of this effort, the County has partnered with the Los Angeles Regional Collaborative for Climate Action and Sustainability (LARC) and more than 75 distribution partners from local government to reduce heat-related illness through an "extreme heat campaign". This campaign was launched in 2022 and ran for the first time in the summer of 2023. The objectives of the campaign include: 

The campaign includes a print and social media toolkit that is shared at public events and venues throughout Los Angeles via email or print, and an extreme heat Public Service Announcement that runs on 2,300 + LA Metro buses from July-September. 

One challenge that LARC and the County are faced with is developing a Project Evaluation Plan that will be used to guide the monitoring and evaluation of the 2024 extreme heat campaign to improve it for the 2025 heat season. The Project Evaluation Plan will be prepared this July 2024.  From July-October 2024, the team will conduct data collection, tracking, and reporting associated with evaluation. Then in November 2024, the team will hold a retreat with all partners to review successes, identify areas for improvement, and tweak the project model for the 2025 heat season.
From January-April 2025, the team will produce a mid-term progress report to track work completed, provide information on community partnerships, meetings, provide information on the project effectiveness (i.e., successes and areas for improvement), and provide feedback for program staff.  

Information from the Evaluation Plan and progress report will be integrated into the CHAP.

The actions that the NYU students would engage with are identified in bold above, to fit within the September 2024-May 2025 work periods for the students. Their recommendations would need to come in late April/early May 2025 for LARC and the County to be able to implement their suggestions in the summer of 2025. 

The success of the project will be determined by the success of the heat campaign in 2025 in meeting its objectives more successfully than in previous years. This would be measured in terms of the number of people utilizing County resources for staying cool, accessing utility assistance programs, improved energy efficiency,  lives saved, and other metrics as presented in the Project Evaluation Plan.