Ruth Ann Norton

Biography

Ruth Ann Norton is the President & CEO of the Green & Healthy Homes Initiative (GHHI). She has led its development into one of the nation’s most effective and foremost authorities on healthy housing and its impact on the social determinants of health, affordable housing, and residential clean energy. She directs GHHI’s national strategy to integrate climate, healthcare, and healthy housing as a platform for improved health, economic, and social outcomes in historically disinvested communities. Ruth Ann is a noted expert on building community capacity and effective work plans to incorporate environmental health standards in housing-related programs. She directs GHHI’s $60 million Thriving Communities Grantmaking Program for EPA Region 3 to fund environmental and public health projects across the Mid-Atlantic and is spearheading GHHI’s work in the development and implementation of decarbonization, electrification, and climate change mitigation services for low income households. Ruth Ann is the Chair of Healthy Climate Maryland, the Maryland Lead Poisoning Prevention Commission, is a member of the State of Maryland’s Green and Healthy Housing Task Force and serves on numerous other Boards relating to affordable, healthy and climate resilient housing. Formerly, she served on: the EPA Children’s Health Protection Advisory Committee (CHPAC), as a Liaison Member to the CDC’s Lead Exposure and Prevention Advisory Committee, the Maryland Clean Energy Center Board of Directors, the DC Solar Task Force, the National Council of State Housing Agencies’ National Advisory Group, and the APHA Environmental Leadership Network, among many others. She is a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Community Health Leader, a Weinberg Foundation Fellow and a WE ACT Environmental and Social Justice awardee. Ruth Ann is a published author notably around electrification and healthy housing including Health Justice Strategies to Eradicate Lead Poisoning: An Urgent Call to Action to Safeguard Future Generations and Duty to Protect: Enhancing the Federal Framework to Prevent Childhood Lead Poisoning and Exposure to Environmental Harm published in the Yale University Journal of Health Policy, Law and Ethics and Capitalizing on the Health Impacts of Improving Housing Conditions published in the Duke University School of Medicine’s Practical Playbook.