“Counting the Cost of Heat: How Medical Examiners Are Changing the Game”
Medical examiners in Pima County, Arizona, and Maricopa County, Arizona, are rethinking how to catalog and count heat-related deaths, a crucial step towards understanding the growing impacts of heat on human health. Greg Hess, the medical examiner for Pima County, deals with death on a daily basis, handling around 3,000 deaths each year, including those caused by Arizona’s intense heat.
The issue of accurately counting heat-related deaths is a significant one, as climate change continues to exacerbate extreme weather events like heatwaves, hurricanes, and wildfires. Despite the growing risks posed by climate change, the true toll of these disasters on human lives is often undercounted, leading to a lack of understanding of their full impact on communities and the inability to effectively plan for and prevent future losses.
A small group of health experts across the country has estimated that thousands of Americans die each year due to climate-fueled disasters, but there is no official tracking of these deaths. This lack of accurate data hinders efforts to address the problem and implement effective solutions.
In response to this challenge, medical examiners like Greg Hess and Jeff Johnston in Arizona have developed innovative strategies to more accurately count heat-related deaths. By expanding their criteria to include not just heat-caused deaths but also heat-related deaths, these medical examiners have been able to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the impact of heat on mortality rates.
The data collected by these medical examiners has been instrumental in informing public health policies and interventions. For example, in Maricopa County, the data on heat-related deaths was used to advocate for policies preventing utility shut-offs during the summer, potentially saving lives.
Despite the success of these initiatives, adoption of similar protocols has been slow across the country. The fragmented nature of death investigation systems and the lack of standardized practices for counting disaster-related deaths present significant challenges to improving data collection and analysis.
The need for more accurate counting of disaster-related deaths extends beyond heat-related fatalities to include deaths caused by hurricanes, wildfires, and other climate-related events. Without a comprehensive and standardized approach to counting these deaths, the true impact of climate change on human health will remain underestimated.
As the effects of climate change continue to worsen, the work of medical examiners like Greg Hess and Jeff Johnston becomes increasingly vital in providing accurate data to inform public health responses and save lives. Their efforts to rethink how heat-related deaths are counted are a crucial step towards addressing the growing impacts of climate change on human health.