Championing Clean Air for All: How Air Quality Affects Health

January 22, 2026 6:00pm Central Time (US and Canada)

This session will explore strategic advocacy approaches to advance clean air policies that protect public health and promote environmental justice. Attendees will learn how to support state and local efforts to reduce air pollution, transition to zero-emission vehicles and clean energy, and improve air quality monitoring - especially in communities most impacted by pollution and climate change.

Speaker Bio: Kristina Hamilton, MPH, Director of Advocacy for Illinois and Iowa for the American Lung Association. The American Lung Association is a 120-year-old organization dedicated to saving lives by improving lung health and preventing lung disease.

Based in Chicago, Kristina leads all public policy efforts in Illinois and Iowa related to lung health issues, including tobacco use prevention and control, healthcare access, air quality, and lung disease treatment and awareness. Since beginning her full-time work with the Lung Association in 2014, Kristina’s legislative successes include helping to pass laws to require Illinois Medicaid to cover tobacco cessation counseling, fund lung cancer screening and tobacco prevention programs in Illinois, require radon testing/mitigation and to allow emergency asthma medication in Iowa schools, and cap the cost of prescription inhaler copays in Illinois.

Additionally, she was the first-ever chair of the American Lung Association’s National Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Council. In 2022, she was awarded the Lung Association’s National Innovation. Originally from a suburb of Washington, DC, Kristina earned her bachelor’s degree in history and African American Studies at the University of Virginia and her master’s degree in health policy and administration at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) where she is also an adjunct lecturer in the UIC School of Public Health.

Registrants will be added to the 350 Chicago listserv & may unsubcribe.