In the U.S., heat is responsible for more deaths than all other weather events combined. Associate Professor Sabrina McCormick of George Washington University’s Milken Institute School of Public Health is at the forefront of efforts to improve our ability to identify cases of heat-related mortality, which are expected to rise due to climate change. In an editorial in the American Journal of Public Health, she and two colleagues explain why the lack of national criteria for heat death may be causing us to underestimate heat’s impacts.
“Correctly estimating heat-related deaths is increasingly important in understanding the impacts of climate change on health,” McCormick says.
Two very different approaches are currently used to investigate and quantify heat-related mortality. In the editorial McCormick, Jaime Madrigano of the Rutgers School of Public Health, and Patrick Kinney of the Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, explain that many studies of excess death during periods of high heat are conducted in urban areas. These studies may not factor in the role played by heat because it is considered an external cause of death.
In “The two ways of assessing heat-related mortality and vulnerability,” McCormick, Madrigano, and Kinney recommend training groups involved in identifying deaths in how to recognize when heat plays a role. This includes physicians, police, public health officials, medical examiners and coroners.