Ruth Ann Norton

Ruth Ann Norton, President & CEO of the Green & Healthy Homes Initiative (GHHI), joined the organization in 1993 and 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. An expert on lead poisoning prevention, healthy housing, and the intersection of climate, energy and health, Ms. Norton directs GHHI’s national strategy, policy framework, and services to integrate climate, healthcare, and healthy housing as a platform for improved health, economic, educational, and social outcomes in historically disinvested communities.

Ms. Norton is a health advisor to Energy Efficiency for All (EEFA) and has authored several publications on energy equity, including the recent Leading with Equity and Justice in the Clean Energy Transition, Charting a Pathway to Maryland’s Equitable Clean Energy Future, Cutting Through the Smog: How Air Quality Standards Help Solve the Hidden Health Toll of Air Pollution from Maryland’s Homes and Businesses, Leveraging the IRA: Transforming the Market for Equitable Building Decarbonization, and Achieving Health and Social Equity Through Housing: Understanding the Impact of Non-Energy Benefits in the United States. She has been recognized as the architect of Maryland’s 99% decline in childhood lead poisoning and has co-authored numerous publications on lead poisoning prevention and healthy homes strategies and innovative funding mechanisms to address unhealthy housing conditions at scale in the nation’s under-resourced communities including among others: Health Justice Strategies to Eradicate Lead Poisoning: An Urgent Call To Action To Safeguard Future Generations, Duty to Protect: Enhancing the Federal Framework to Prevent Childhood Lead Poisoning and Exposure to Environmental Harm, and Capitalizing on the Health Impacts of Improving Housing Conditions.

Ms. Norton oversees GHHI’s research team including on a NASA-funded Equity and Environmental Justice grant that is researching and conducting data analysis on climate change impacts on urban environments in the State of New York in partnership with Yale University as part of the Identifying Temperature Disparities, Energy Insecurities and Social Vulnerability for Energy Justice in New York State Project.

Ms. Norton serves as a member of the EPA Children’s Health Protection Advisory Committee (CHPAC), the Maryland Clean Energy Center Board of Directors, the National Leadership Academy for the Public’s Health (NLAPH), the National Council of State Housing Agencies’ National Advisory Group, the APHA Environmental Leadership Network, the Ohio Asthma Council and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Center for Population Health Information Technology Advisory Board. Ms. Norton is also Chair of the Maryland Lead Poisoning Prevention Commission and is an appointed liaison member to the CDC’s Lead Exposure and Prevention Advisory Committee.

Ms. Norton is a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Community Health Leader, a Weinberg Foundation Fellow, a WE ACT Environmental and Social Justice awardee, and received the Tony Woods Award for Excellence from the Building Performance Industry in 2016 for her efforts to integrate energy efficiency upgrades with healthy homes interventions on a national scale. Ms. Norton holds a BS in Economics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.