Just days before the one-year anniversary of the violent tornado that tore through North St. Louis, more than 600 health care and sustainability leaders gathered in St. Louis for a national conference focused on climate resilience, disaster preparedness and the future of environmentally sustainable health care.
The conference, CleanMed 2026, was held May 12-14 and hosted by Health Care Without Harm and Practice Greenhealth. Organizers said St. Louis was selected in part because of what last year’s tornado revealed about disaster response, neighborhood inequities and community resilience.
“We chose St. Louis because of what the tornado revealed: the consequences of disinvestment, the power of community leadership, and how health care can prepare and engage differently before disaster strikes,” said Emily Bancroft, chief executive officer of Health Care Without Harm.
The conference repeatedly returned to the impact the tornado had on North St. Louis neighborhoods and the community response that followed. One year after the storm, many residents in some of the hardest-hit neighborhoods still are dealing with damaged homes, demolitions, housing instability and uneven recovery efforts.
That reality shaped the work recognized during the conference, including the selection of Kayla Reed, co-founder and executive director of Action St. Louis, for CleanMed’s 2026 Community Catalyst Award. Other health care and sustainability leaders from around the country also received awards recognizing climate preparedness, environmental stewardship and public health leadership.
“I feel very privileged and honored to do this work every day,” Reed said. “Anytime the work is recognized, I’m really grateful, because it’s a team effort that shapes our impact in this region.”
Reed has spent more than a decade organizing in North St. Louis through campaigns focused on housing, voting rights, criminal justice reform and electoral organizing.
“What keeps me in this work is the quality of life of our babies,” she said. “That they are able to live in stable communities.”
That organizing network became part of a large grassroots relief effort after the tornado struck on May 16, 2025.
Within days, Action St. Louis created a resident intake form that collected more than 10,000 responses from 7,205 households representing more than 21,000 people. The information became the basis for a referral partnership with the St. Louis Integrated Health Network that connected residents with medical care, behavioral health services, prescription access and help managing chronic conditions disrupted by the storm.
Reed described the tornado as the moment when “a natural disaster really met a systemic disaster,” pointing to decades of disinvestment that made recovery more difficult for many North St. Louis residents.
“We needed to have continued relationships with institutions that could meet that moment,” she said.
“North City is a place that is often disinvested and ignored,” Reed added. “But it is actually the spirit and soul of this city. Everything that people love about St. Louis comes from communities and families who live there.”
She said the neighborhoods hardest hit by the storm also are central to the city’s identity and future.
“North City is our North Star,” Reed said. “When North City is whole and well and thriving, the rest of St. Louis will absolutely be lifted up, too.”
The conference, held at St. Louis Union Station Hotel, also highlighted broader efforts across the health care industry to address climate preparedness, hospital sustainability and emergency response planning.
Featured speaker Dr. Alexander Garza, chief community health officer at SSM Health, urged attendees to build partnerships before emergencies occur.
“Do things in the routine that you would do in the extreme,” Garza said. “Build those relationships in peacetime, so you have them when you need them.”