“The Greenprint Project is an exciting collaboration with several partners committed to making Louisville a healthier, greener city. This initiative offers a unique opportunity to reimagine and revitalize downtown Louisville,” said Aruni Bhatnagar, director, Christina Lee Brown Envirome Institute. “Using an evidence-based approach, the project will create a ‘greenprint’ designed to enhance both environmental quality and public health. The model we develop could serve as a scientific framework for greening downtowns around the world.”

This is the latest in the institute’s growing efforts to understand how the environment impacts human health and chronic disease. UofL’s New Vision of Health Campus and Trager Microforest also are participating partners.

“Downtown is the heart of our city and revitalizing our downtown benefits every Louisvillian. The Greenprint initiative shows what’s possible when government, nonprofits, businesses and community partners come together around a shared vision,” said Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg. “By using nature as a tool to strengthen our neighborhoods and create welcoming spaces, we are making downtown safer, healthier and stronger for everyone – and setting an example that other cities across the country can follow.”

Seed funding of $1.5 million from the James Graham Brown Foundation helped catalyze the partnership, which includes leaders from city government, higher education, nonprofits and grassroots groups. The charter signing represents the formal beginning of this collective effort and signals Louisville’s intent to become a national model for revitalizing cities through nature-based solutions.

“The Greenprint initiative reflects the kind of bold, collaborative vision the James Graham Brown Foundation is proud to support,” said Mason Rummel, president and CEO of the James Graham Brown Foundation. “By aligning science and community input, this effort has the potential to transform downtown Louisville into a national model for place-based investment in public health and urban vitality.”

Greenprint projects will span beyond traditional parks to include tree canopy enhancements, pollinator-friendly landscaping, green corridors, microforests and nature-based health interventions. Together, these efforts aim to improve air quality, reduce heat islands, support biodiversity and enhance mental and physical health. Monitoring technology will be used to track environmental and health impacts of greening over time. These tools will help measure progress, inform future investments and increase transparency and public engagement.

The partnership, built on a collective impact model, focuses on measurable outcomes and long-term sustainability. While each participating project maintains its own identity, Greenprint ensures alignment through shared data and strategy that can assist with tracking impact across the downtown footprint.

Other partners include: Belvedere, LouMed, Louisville Downtown Partnership, Louisville Metro Government, Louisville Parks and Recreation, Office of Sustainability – Whole City Nature Vision, Broadway All the Way, East Market Streetscape Improvements, Reimagine 9th Street, Louisville Sports & Entertainment District/Slugger Field, Olmsted Conservancy, Parks Alliance of Louisville, TreesLouisville, VOA Care Campus and Waterfront Park.

View pictures on ��from the Aug. 20, 2025, charter signing event.

To learn more about the Greenprint initiative and explore the portfolio of projects, visit .

Louisville residents are well acquainted with the challenges caused by urban heat, such as higher utility bills and serious health problems that disproportionately affect residents with pre-existing health conditions.

The new study also involves Brian Stone, a professor and director of the��Urban Climate Lab��at Georgia Institute of Technology, whose previous work identified Louisville as having one of the fastest-growing urban heat islands in the nation.

An urban heat island exists when the built environment – buildings, sidewalks and paved roads – absorbs more heat than natural surfaces such as grass, trees and exposed soil, causing higher air temperatures. Those heat-absorbent surfaces also retain that heat during nighttime hours.

“Louisville has been at the forefront of studying urban heat for years, thanks to foundational work like ,” Stone said. “However, the climate continues to change and the city continues to grow. This new project provides an unprecedented, highly detailed look at current temperatures and the specific cooling power of different types of vegetation in 2025. It’s about giving Louisville the most up-to-date, actionable science to make truly impactful decisions, which is especially relevant as residents are facing extreme heat right now.”

The project will use advanced climate models to generate highly detailed, hourly temperature maps for June, July and August 2025. These maps will cover the entire Jefferson County area – nearly 398 square miles – at a remarkable resolution of 100 meters, offering an unparalleled view of where heat is most intense across Louisville’s urban core. Sensors installed by the Envirome Institute around Louisville will provide data to help enrich the model. The project, supported by the James Graham Brown Foundation, begins in July and is expected to be completed within three months.

Beyond traditional temperature readings, the study will also measure factors that provide a more complete picture of actual heat stress experienced by individuals.

A key focus of this research involves an in-depth analysis of how various tree canopies reduce temperatures. Researchers will investigate which areas benefit most from new tree plantings and how different tree species — and whether they are coniferous or deciduous — impact cooling differently.

Precise insights gained from the new project also will enhance and expedite the Envirome Institute’s research into health benefits of additional greenness, including the and the in downtown Louisville.

“At the Envirome Institute, our mission is to understand how the environment shapes our health. This new analysis comes at a time when we are all facing tremendous heat burden,” said Aruni Bhatnagar, executive director of the . “By precisely mapping urban temperatures and land cover like trees and other vegetation, we’re not just gathering data; we’re creating a powerful new tool. This research will allow us to strategically use urban greening as a direct intervention to improve public health in our downtown core and across every neighborhood in Louisville.”

The project will also analyze heat-related mortality at the neighborhood level in order to highlight areas where residents are most vulnerable to heat-related illnesses and where targeted interventions are most urgently needed to improve public health outcomes. This insight will help guide tree planting initiatives by and other partners, ensuring that efforts maximize cooling benefits.

“TreesLouisville has been working tirelessly to expand our urban canopy, utilizing data from previous assessments to guide our strategic planting,” said Cindi Sullivan, executive director of TreesLouisville. “This new study will provide us with an even sharper focus, pinpointing exactly where our efforts will have the greatest impact and helping us choose the right trees for the right places to achieve significant temperature reductions for our community. This is particularly urgent as we continue to push towards our city’s goal of every neighborhood having at least 30% canopy cover.”

Article is co-authored by Ted Smith.

“This season we had SummerWorks youth doing everything from skilled trades training to technology entrepreneurship and science research,” said Mayor Greenberg. “It’s exciting to see the collaboration with employers in the private and public sectors, as well as our largest educational institutions JCPS and UofL.”

The Louisville Science Pathways program, which is funded by SummerWorks, placed high school students in STEM labs across multiple departments at UofL. These students got hands-on experience assisting professional scientists and faculty in areas such as neurobiology, psychology, computer science, engineering and more. In addition to Louisville Science Pathways, SummerWorks also supported youth working at the at the J.B. Speed School of Engineering.

“We are proud to partner with Mayor Greenberg and his SummerWorks program to provide exciting opportunities like the ones at the Louisville Science Pathways and the J.B. Speed School of Engineering. Both of these efforts are exposing a diverse set of students to people, careers and educational pathways that they might otherwise never know about,” Schatzel said. “We love that high school students are getting exposed to our beautiful campus, our great faculty and our talented graduate and undergraduate students. We hope to see many of them in a year or two as students at UofL.”

SummerWorks participants see higher rates of graduation, college attendance and full-time employment than their peers, according to a 2019 study by the Kentucky Center for Statistics.

“Young people are our next generation of leaders, yet too many, especially from underrepresented communities, don’t have access to the skills, network and work experience they need to prepare them for meaningful employment opportunities in the future,” said Costel, Kentucky Region Manager for JPMorgan Chase. “Good jobs are the foundation of a strong economy but remain out of reach for too many. Bringing together local government, employers and community partners through summer youth employment programs can help bridge this gap and ensure that more young people are connected with the resources and tools they need to better prepare them for the opportunities of tomorrow.”

All Louisville youth ages 16 to 21 (as of June 1) are eligible to enroll in SummerWorks. Applicants who face barriers and come from disadvantaged backgrounds are prioritized in the job-matching process. Once youth register online, they can create or upload a resume, get soft skills training and apply for job opportunities.

SummerWorks also is continuing to sponsor jobs and work-learn experiences at nonprofits and agencies across the community that share the program’s commitment to advancing equity.

SummerWorks is operated by Louisville in partnership with , the Louisville region’s Workforce Development Board. SummerWorks’ core operating funds are approved by the Louisville Metro Council. Supporters of SummerWorks include the James Graham Brown Foundation, the Diaz Family Foundation, JPMorgan Chase, the Jewish Heritage Fund, the Gingko Foundation and others.

To learn more about SummerWorks and how to get involved as a participant, employer or supporter, visit .

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The grant will help UofL increase early student success in five College of Arts & Sciences courses in math, biology and chemistry – all required for many STEM+H degree programs – that traditionally have high rates of grade D, failure and withdrawal (DFW). Low grades or failing these courses can lead students to abandon the STEM+H fields, take longer to graduate or leave UofL altogether.

“UofL is committed to recruiting, retaining and launching graduates prepared to serve the commonwealth’s STEM+H workforce needs in information systems, engineering, nursing, medicine and other fields,” said UofL President Neeli Bendapudi. “Many thanks to the James Graham Brown Foundation for this funding to help the university continue to serve the community’s needs.”

“Student success is a priority for our foundation because we believe that equitable educational attainment will increase economic and social mobility for Kentuckians,” said Mason��B. Rummel, president and chief executive of the James Graham Brown Foundation. “We are supporting this initiative with the University of Louisville because undergraduate learning assistant programs have shown the potential to dramatically improve academic performance.”��

The effort builds on student-success programs already in place at UofL through the Resources for Academic Achievement (REACH) unit. It will place advanced undergraduate, peer-level structured learning assistants (SLAs) within the classrooms of the five College of Arts & Sciences courses in math, biology and chemistry. The SLAs will work with instructors to engage small groups of students within the classrooms to help them better understand the material and prepare for assignments.

REACH director Geoff Bailey said the SLAs will help students break down concepts and apply information using critical thinking exercises.

“If we can infuse student leaders in these classes to a ratio of about 1 for every 25 students who need assistance, we have an opportunity to move the needle in ways that we haven’t been able to do previously,” Bailey said. “This enables us to take it to a whole other level just because of the sheer numbers.”

The JGBF grant will train and support the SLAs from any undergraduate major with hourly wages and tuition stipends. Based on projected enrollment, Bailey expects to hire 59 students for these positions to support classes beginning in the Spring 2022 semester. Students hired for the program must have earned an A or B in the class they will assist, have good communication skills and be approved by a faculty member for this role. The SLAs also will benefit from participation as peer mentors, gaining resume-building experience in small-group leadership by helping early college students develop classroom success skills.��

Students may apply for SLA positions at the .

From June 10-19, researchers conducting Phase II of the tested members of the Louisville community for both the presence of the novel coronavirus in the participants’ nasal passages and for antibodies against the virus in their blood. Samples were collected at five community drive-up locations across Louisville by UofL Health and researchers from the . Samples were analyzed by UofL’s Center for Predictive Medicine for Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Disease in its Regional Biocontainment Laboratory.

To obtain a representative sample for the study, households in Jefferson County were organized into geographic regions based on U.S. Census Bureau tract boundaries. Households within each region were sent invitations to participate in proportion to the population of that region. Within the regions, areas that had higher concentrations of non-white residents were sampled at a higher rate to increase their representation.

Invitations were mailed to a total of 18,232 addresses. Based on the ages and sexes of all adults in the household as provided by those responding to the invitation, one adult from each household was asked to provide a sample.

The researchers tested 509 people who responded to the mailed invitations. An additional 1,728 community members booked appointments on their own and were tested after hearing about the study in the news or on social media. Many individuals who were invited to participate did not book an appointment.��

Of the 2,237 individuals who were tested, 10% were non-white. The ages of tested individuals was as follows:

• 21% between 18-34
• 40% between 35-59
• 40% age 60 or older

Residential locations of the 2,237 participants are shown in Map 1 (below). Overall, nearly 0.4% of the population of Jefferson County was sampled.

Analysis of the study data found that at least 0.05% of the participants had an active infection during the time of the study and approximately 4% (5.1 to 3.2%) of people had detectable levels of antibodies in their blood, indicating they had been exposed to the virus earlier in the year.

“These results allow us, for the first time, to more accurately estimate the spread of coronavirus within our community. If we extrapolate the results from this study to the general population, it would suggest that as many as 20,000 people may have been exposed to the virus – many more than the 3,813 cases reported in the city by the end of June,” said Aruni Bhatnagar, director of the Brown Envirome Institute.

This difference may be due to the fact that people did not have symptoms and were not aware they were infected.

“We were told by several participants that they believed they had COVID-19 before testing was widely available. Nonetheless, our preliminary data suggest that the estimated number of people who have had COVID-19 may be 4 to 6 times higher than those who have tested positive to-date,” said Rachel Keith,assistant professor of environmental medicine at UofL who conducted the study. “This suggests that the virus is much more widespread in our community than previously estimated. I believe this indicates a need for continued and widespread testing, including antibody testing, which plays an important role in understanding the spread of disease.”

“The random sampling of the population also allows us to calculate the true mortality associated with COVID-19,” Bhatnagar said. “Previous estimates of COVID-19-related mortality have varied from 0.5 to 15%. However, given that the city had reported 209 deaths by the end of June, our results suggest that the rate of mortality associated with the virus, at least in Kentucky, may be 1.3%. This is significantly higher than the 0.65% rate suggested by the CDC. Our research suggests that many who are infected with the virus nationwide have not been tested and that there is urgent need to continue random testing so that we can calculate the most accurate mortality rate.”

The study data also provide an estimate of the spread of the infection in Louisville.

“Because participants were drawn from all parts of the city, we could estimate which areas have had the highest rates of infection,” Keith said. “Although we are still analyzing all our data, our early results show that the highest cluster of individuals exposed to the virus is in Western Louisville. (See Map 2, below). We found that the prevalence of exposure was twice as high in non-white participants as in white participants. Most (54%) of those who tested positive for the antibody were between the ages of 35-59 years old,” she said.

The researchers cautioned that because so little is known about SARS-CoV-2 and because the rates of community infection and exposure are changing rapidly, the results of this survey are applicable only to the period of June 10-19.

“Although many individuals had detectable levels, the amount of antibodies in blood varied greatly among the participants,” said Kenneth Palmer, director of the CPM. “As a result, we are not sure to what extent they are protected from re-infection. Indeed, some of our early results show that the levels of antibodies decline rapidly within a month. Therefore, we are planning to re-measure individuals who had antibodies in their blood to see if those levels are maintained over time and, if so, for how long.”

Currently, the researchers are repeating the antibody test in those health care workers who were found to have anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies during . They also plan to repeat community-wide testing in Jefferson County in September.

This study was supported in part by the James Graham Brown Foundation. The Co-Immunity Project is a collaboration of the UofL Christina Lee Brown Envirome Institute, the Louisville Healthcare CEO Council and three health systems in Louisville – Baptist Health, Norton Healthcare and UofL Health.