SPH Partners with MAPC to Host Symposium on Heat Health.
Greg Wellenius, professor of environmental health and director of SPH’s Center for Climate and Health, introduces the symposium by outlining three key questions: What is working well? What could be improved? What is missing?
SPH Partners with MAPC to Host Symposium on Heat Health
The event convened stakeholders from across the state to discuss research and policy to address extreme heat and health.
With half the country poised to hit record-breaking high temperatures, the Center for Climate and Health at the School of Public Health collaborated with the Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC) to host a timely symposium focused on heat and health on June 18.
“Fostering Collaborations: A Symposium to Advance Equitable Heat Health Actions” was sponsored by the Doris Duke Foundation and convened more than 100 stakeholders from over 80 different institutions—including state and municipal government agencies, healthcare facilities, community-based organizations, foundations, advocacy groups, and other universities. It was held at the Duan Family Center for Computing and Data Sciences, BU’s most sustainable building, where participants shared conversations around actionable strategies to bridge the gap between heat health research, policy, and practice.
”I think it’s of interest to the community that we do these things, leading discussions that are not just for academics, but go beyond academia to how to actually solve real problems in our backyard,” said Greg Wellenius, a professor in the Department of Environmental Health and the director of the Center for Climate and Health, of the motivation behind organizing the symposium. “In time, one of the things of the [Doris Duke Foundation] wants to do is create a working agenda on where do we go from here? So, this is real opportunity to set the agenda for funding into the future.”
Wellenius studies the adverse health effects of climate change, including hot weather which has become more frequent and severe across the U.S. in recent years. In 2020, Wellenius co-authored a study showing that deaths from heat are likely undercounted with thousands of deaths attributable to heat each year, far more than the official estimate of 600 deaths annually previously reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Even so, heat is the deadliest form of extreme weather in the country, and poses particular danger to already vulnerable populations including young children, older adults, pregnant individuals, people with pre-existing medical conditions such as asthma or diabetes, people taking certain medications (such as those used for high blood pressure or allergies), and people experiencing homelessness, among others.
Wellenius posed three questions to symposium attendees to guide their thinking as they listened to various speakers and panelists, as well as engaged in discussion throughout the event: What is working well? What could be improved? And what is missing?
Panelist Caleb Dresser, an emergency medicine physician at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and the leader of the Climate Resilient Clinics program at the Harvard Chan Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment, emphasized that society has a long way to go in terms of raising public awareness of heat-related illness. For example, many of his patients and their family members can quickly recognize the telltale signs of a stroke, he said. “We need the same thing for heat-related illness, so that we are getting people into the emergency department, or maybe the cooling center for a glass of cold water and some salty food, well before the worst things happen.”
In addition to educating patients and their families, Dresser stressed the importance of educating the healthcare workforce as well. “If I’m caring for somebody with septic shock,” he said, “that is not the time for me to be learning how to care for someone with septic shock. I needed to learn that in medical school, in residency, that skill set. We need to have the same attitude toward heat-related illness. The time to do that is now.”
Panelist Zoë Davis, a senior climate resilience project manager in the City of Boston Office of Climate Resilience, and panelist Mia Mansfield, the assistant secretary for resilience in the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, echoed Dresser’s urgency. They noted how the city and state have well-established protocols and workflows for cold weather and how the changing climate now calls for the same diligence to protect residents from extreme heat.
Panel moderator Isabella Gambill, the assistant director of climate, energy, and resilience at the Boston-area nonprofit A Better City , urged stakeholders to consider not only what is missing but who is missing from the conversation on addressing extreme heat. “We often talk about extreme heat as a silent killer. It’s both a racial and a climate justice issue that impacts our communities of color worst and first, because they’ve been repeatedly disinvested in,” said Gambill.
A Better City, alongside the City of Boston and The Boston Foundation, have previously collaborated with SPH on several investigations, including the B-COOL study, an initiative to monitor temperature in real-time across Boston’s neighborhoods to support a more equitable approach to the declaration of heat emergencies. Currently, the National Weather Service uses a single sensor located at Boston Logan Airport to determine whether conditions warrant a warning on heat risk.
Patricia Fabian, associate professor of environmental health, leads the BU team working on B-COOL study. During a portion of the symposium set aside for lightning talks, Fabian summarized her broad portfolio of heat-related research to illustrate how academics can engage with the broader community in the search for heat health solutions.
Fabian shared the results of B-COOL’s sensor pilot project last summer, as well as the team’s plans to evaluate the effects of existing shade structures across the city in the coming weeks. She discussed her ongoing work with Madeleine Scammell, professor of environmental health, on the C-HEAT study, which will investigate occupational heat hazards using personal wearable devices next month in partnership with the community organization GreenRoots. She also highlighted her continuing partnership with Boston Public Schools which leverages the district’s extensive network of air quality sensors to support decision-making around student health and facility sustainability. Fabian also teased the launch of a new project titled Community Adaptations To City Heat (CATCH) that will harness funding from the UK-based nonprofit Wellcome Trust to engage community stakeholders in Boston, New Orleans, and Phoenix on heat, energy, and health policy issues through activities such as photovoice, a form of participatory research that empowers participants share their lived experiences through photography and storytelling.
Additional lightning talks included: “Exposure on the Move: Assessing the Health Risks of Heat and Mobility” on the use of mapping to better understand the geography of heat exposure by Seth Strumwasser, a data analyst with the Boston Region Metropolitan Planning Organization; “Shade as a Third Place” on the integration of shade into public spaces by Drew Kane, a senior city planner for the City of Cambridge, and Kendra White, a climate resilience manager for the City of Cambridge; “Uplifting Community Expertise to Inform Clinical Responses” on coalition building for policy and advocacy by Kathleen O’Brien, a community health program manager at Cambridge Health Alliance, and Nicole Fina, a civic engagement and advocacy manager at Everett Community Growers; and “Heat Education Alert Tool (HEAT) Response Initiative: Addressing Extreme Heat through Public Health Agency, Health Care and Community Partnerships” on the Massachusetts Department of Public Health’s new heat alert system by Marissa Hauptman, a pediatrician and pediatric environmental health specialist at Boston Children’s Hospital and chief medical advisor to the Bureau of Climate and Environmental Health at Mass DPH, and Amanda McNeill, an environmental analyst at Mass DPH.
The full agenda and materials from the event are publicly available on the symposium website.
