Using the New HeatRisk Dashboard to Save Lives

Jen Middleton, MD, MPH
Posted on May 20, 2024

A new tool, the HeatRisk dashboard, is now available to provide daily risk assessments for heat-related illness. The HeatRisk map was developed by a partnership of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Weather Service in response to the recent increase in heat-related deaths across the United States. Family physicians can teach patients and communities how to use HeatRisk to save lives.

Heat-related deaths in the United States have increased substantially in the last few years, from 1,602 in 2021 to 2,302 in 2023. Given that June to August of 2023 was the Northern Hemisphere’s hottest summer on record, it’s no surprise that heat-related illness is on the rise:

More than two-thirds of all people in the U.S. were under a heat alert at some point in 2023. And a recent report from the CDC found that daily emergency department visits due to heat-related illness peaked in several regions over the warm season months in 2023, and then they remained exceedingly high for an extended duration.

Already in 2024, 12 Texas counties are predicted to have ”five or more extremely hot days” during the month of May, potentially affecting the health of over 615,000 people.

It’s a timely scenario for the arrival of HeatRisk, a simple dashboard where users enter their zip code and then receive a risk category for the day. The risk calculation is based on “temperature, some measure of humidity, and how unusual or unrelenting the heat may be.” The five risk categories are described as colors: green for no risk, yellow for low risk, orange for increased risk for people with heat-sensitive conditions, red for risk elevated to anyone outside or without access to air conditioning, and magenta for “rare” times when heat would be risky to everyone. Physicians can assess their individual patients’ risk for heat injury by using the CHILL’D OUT questionnaire (Cooling, Housing, Isolation & mobility, eLectricity, Learning, Drugs, OUTside), a tool that acknowledges the disproportionate risk for persons who are very young or older, who are living in poverty, and/or who are housing insecure.  We should also ensure that we are screening our patients who identify as persons of color; “[b]ecause of structural discriminatory practices, Black and Hispanic individuals are more likely than other population groups to live in heat islands,” areas of cities with increased pavement and decreased trees. We can counsel patients to monitor their area’s HeatRisk and take needed steps for safety (getting to air conditioning, postponing outdoor activities, staying well hydrated) based upon their medical history and the HeatRisk category.

Climate change has been declared a public health emergency by more than 100 health care organizations, including the AAFP, and warmer weather is prolonging allergy season, permitting insect vectors of disease to migrate northward, increasing the prevalence of heat injury. Responding to these changes’ effects on our patients, working proactively to reduce climate-related risk, and advocating for needed actions to reverse climate change are all well within our role as family physicians.

The HeatRisk dashboard is available online. Be sure to also check out this 2019 AFP article on recognizing and treating “Heat-Related Illnesses“ (in the AFP By Topic on Environmental Health and Climate Change) along with the CDC’s guidance on mitigating heat’s effects on specific medical conditions and medications.