The HEAL Progress Report is Live!

Where you live, your income, race, or language ability should not determine how healthy and safe you are. But in our communities, health and well-being varies significantly according to who you are and where you live. People across Washington State who are suffering worst from pollution are often people with lower incomes, communities of color, Indigenous peoples, and linguistically isolated folks, and they pay with their well-being and shortened lives.

In 2021, after years of hard work and dedicated community mobilization, Front and Centered was able to celebrate the passage and signing of Senate Bill 5141: the Healthy Environment for All (HEAL) Act, a landmark environmental justice law. But it’s 2023 now: what’s happened since the bill was signed? 2023 is a critical year for the HEAL Act, with the law’s requirements to assess significant agency actions as well as budgets and spending coming into effect. The legislature will also determine what funding is available to communities and agencies.

In their first community progress report, Front and Centered assesses implementation of the HEAL Act midway through its first cycle of requirements and recommends how to realize the full potential from a non-governmental, community-based perspective, based on their observations, conversations, and participation:

As the person handling the final rounds of editing and copyediting on this report over the last six weeks, I’m really proud of how this publication turned out, and I hope you check it out!