Post updated July 10, 2024
Extreme heat is a growing public health threat. And the risk of a heat-related death is two to three hundred times higher for people living unsheltered than for the population at large, according to David Hondula, director of Phoenix’s first-in-the-nation Office of Heat Response and Mitigation.
In 2022, homeless deaths in Maricopa County, home to Phoenix, were staggeringly high, and almost certainly an undercount. In recent years, the heat has been among the county’s biggest killers of people experiencing homelessness.
How can municipalities and health centers combat the deadly effects of climate change on those who live on the street? Experts agree that the best way to prevent people from dying on the streets is to house them. Short of that, communities must take mitigating action.
Health care providers are on the front lines of the climate and housing crises, and the deadly way those two things intersect.
Resources
- Severe Weather Survival Tips (NHCHC)
- Surviving Severe Weather: Tools to Promote Emergency Preparedness for People Experiencing Homelessness (NHCHC)
- Exposure-Related Conditions: Symptoms and Prevention Strategies (Healing Hands, via HCH Clinicians’ Network )
- The Use of Cooling Centers to Prevent Heat-Related Illness: Summary of Evidence and Strategies for Implementation (CDC)
- Extreme Heat Exposure: Access and Barriers to Cooling Centers — Maricopa and Yuma Counties, Arizona, 2010–2020 (CDC)
- Strengthening Heat Action Plans in the United States (American Journal of Public Health)
- The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association’s Heat Wave topic page
- Hot Weather Tips with Jen Nunes, PA (Boston Health Care for the Homeless)
- As the World Burns: HCH Responses to the Impacts of Extreme Weather and Climate Change (HCH2024 presentation materials from Susannah King, David Peery, Stephanie Martinez, Lucy Kasdin, and Brittany Melton-Hill)
Request Technical Assistance
Wondering how to address the effects extreme heat is having on the unhoused in your community? Need details on how other health centers are approaching this growing concern? Want to learn more about the process of setting up a cooling center? The National HCH Council can help!
