Ambient temperature and emergency department visits for heat-related illness in North Carolina, 2007–2008

Climate & Sustainability Implications of Land Use Alterations in an Urbanizing Region: Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina

“…An additional study investigating UHI impacts in the study area included findings that suggest urban warming is a key driver of pest abundance and outbreaks on urban trees [40]. Finally, an analysis of emergency room visits across North Carolina during the heat waves of 2007 and 2008 found that temperature effects were greatest for middle aged men, and more commonly residents of rural counties [41]. This finding may be logical given the agricultural nature of the state's economy, the fact that daytime UHI is often negative, with rural temperatures exceeding those in urban areas, however additional work would be needed to assess time lags, the correlation with maximum instead of mean daily temperatures, and the impact of acute heat-wave events.…”

Effect of Missing Data on Estimation of the Impact of Heat Waves: Methodological Concerns for Public Health Practice

“…3 Heat exhaustion from water depletion 992. 4 Heat exhaustion from salt depletion 992. 5 Heat exhaustion, unspecified 992.…”

“…Further, these missing data can change analytical and public health conclusions from these studies. Previously, public health researchers have either focused on times of known extreme heat events, eliminating the need for a data-driven extreme heat definition; studied one locale or city-specific heat waves, which typically results in exposure data having similar quality or patterns of missingness across heat waves; or have used only 10-20 years of weather data to define extreme heat, a shorter duration than that used in climate science [1][2][3][4][5][6].…”

“…To estimate the risk of hospitalization for respiratory diseases associated with outdoor heat, Anderson et al [1] used a time-series model with the county-level daily hospitalization rate during May to September, from 1999-2008. Modeling the daily number of heat-related emergency department visits during 2007 and 2008, by age group, county and day, a time-series model was also used to estimate the association between average daily mean temperature and heat-related emergency department visits in Lippman et al [4].…”

Heat Waves' Influence on Health: Some Uncertainties about Their Impact

“…In the latter case, daily mortality is by far the most widely used indicator [8], yet there are other health indicators which are also affected by extremely high temperatures, such as hospital admissions [9] or use of emergency services [10]. Although it might seem, a priori, that these indicators must be interrelated, what happens in reality is that this does not occur.…”