MPH 503 Week 5 Committee Testimony Draft Example

Testimony Draft for the Riverton Housing and Neighborhoods Committee: In Support of a Cooling Standard for Rental Housing, Three Minutes

Student Name

Chamberlain University

MPH 503: Advocacy in Public Health Policy and Law

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

Testimony Draft for the Riverton Housing and Neighborhoods Committee: In Support of a Cooling Standard for Rental Housing, Three Minutes

The Testimony, as It Will Be Spoken

Chair and members of the committee, thank you. My name is Dana Ortiz. I am a registered nurse and a graduate student in public health, and I live in District 4.

I am here to support the cooling standard. Please vote yes.

Here is the one thing I want you to remember. Last summer, nineteen people in Riverton died of heat inside their own homes, in homes where the air conditioner was broken or had never been put in. Six of them lived in this district.

Our housing code already makes a landlord keep a home warm, at 68 degrees, all winter. For summer it has no rule at all. In a city where it is 110 in July, that gap is costing lives.

I will tell you about one of them, with the family's permission. A retired bus driver, 74, lived alone in a second-floor apartment. The window unit broke in late June. The tenant called the manager three times. On the fourth day of a heat warning, a neighbor found the tenant on the floor. The apartment was 97 degrees.

The research on this is not new. In the Chicago heat wave of 1995, people with working air conditioning were far less likely to die. That finding has held up ever since.

I know the concern about cost. This standard covers one room, not the whole unit. A window unit costs a few hundred dollars. The utility has offered rebates. And the ordinance gives landlords until June to comply.

A broken furnace in January is fixed within days, because the code requires it. A broken cooler in July should be fixed the same way.

Please vote yes on the cooling standard. Thank you, and I welcome your questions.

Why It Is Built This Way

Testimony is heard once, so every choice serves the ear. Standing comes first in two lines, nurse, public health student and district resident, because members weigh who is speaking before what is said. The position arrives immediately after, in four words, for the member who has to step out. There is one argument, the gap between the winter and summer standards, because a listener can hold one argument and will lose three. One figure carries the scale, nineteen indoor deaths, with the district's six named for the members who represent it. One face makes the figure real; the story is told with the family's written permission and without the person's name or address. The objection the committee will hear next, from landlords, is answered in four short sentences before it is raised. The ask is repeated word for word at the close.

Sources Behind the Spoken Claims

Every claim in the testimony can be backed if a member asks. The nineteen indoor deaths and the six in District 4 come from the county medical examiner's 2025 heat-death review, which will be submitted with the written version. The statement about the Chicago heat wave rests on a case-control study that found working air conditioning strongly protective (Semenza et al., 1996), and a later meta-analysis that identified home air conditioning as one of the strongest protective factors in heat wave deaths (Bouchama et al., 2007). The window unit cost comes from three local retailers' prices in February 2026.

Timing

The spoken text runs to about 285 words. At a calm speaking pace of about 130 words a minute, it takes a little over two minutes, leaving a margin inside the three-minute limit for a pause after the story. The draft was read aloud twice with a timer; the first reading ran long because the story included the tenant's street, which was cut for privacy and time.

Questions to Expect

Three questions are likely. A member may ask whether small landlords can afford it; the answer is the one-room scope, the rebate and the phase-in, and the working group's offer to meet with the Small Landlords Alliance. A member may ask how inspectors will keep up; the answer is that the department has asked for two inspector positions and that complaints will be prioritized during heat warnings. A member may ask why the city should act rather than the state; the answer is that the state act leaves habitability standards to cities, and that waiting for the legislature would mean more summers under the current code.

The Written Version

A longer written statement accompanies the testimony for the committee record. It includes the medical examiner's breakdown by district, the two studies cited above, the proposed ordinance language and a note on the state act's treatment of local housing codes, so that members and staff who want detail can find it without slowing the spoken testimony. Framing the issue around a familiar comparison, heat in winter and cooling in summer, follows the advice that policy messages work best when they connect to values and rules the audience already accepts (Wallack & Dorfman, 1996).

References

Bouchama, A., Dehbi, M., Mohamed, G., Matthies, F., Shoukri, M., & Menne, B. (2007). Prognostic factors in heat wave-related deaths: A meta-analysis. Archives of Internal Medicine, 167(20), 2170-2176. https://doi.org/10.1001/archinte.167.20.ira70009

Semenza, J. C., Rubin, C. H., Falter, K. H., Selanikio, J. D., Flanders, W. D., Howe, H. L., & Wilhelm, J. L. (1996). Heat-related deaths during the July 1995 heat wave in Chicago. New England Journal of Medicine, 335(2), 84-90. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJM199607113350203

Wallack, L., & Dorfman, L. (1996). Media advocacy: A strategy for advancing policy and promoting health. Health Education Quarterly, 23(3), 293-317. https://doi.org/10.1177/109019819602300303