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Advancing our Understanding of Heat Wave Criteria and Associated Health Impacts to Improve Heat Wave Alerts in Developing Country Settings

Health effects of heat waves with high baseline temperatures in areas such as India remain a critical research gap. In these regions, extreme temperatures may affect the underlying population’s adaptive capacity; heat wave alerts should be optimized to avoid continuous high alert status and enhance...

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Autores principales: Nori-Sarma, Amruta, Benmarhnia, Tarik, Rajiva, Ajit, Azhar, Gulrez Shah, Gupta, Prakash, Pednekar, Mangesh S., Bell, Michelle L.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6617133/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31200449
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16122089
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author Nori-Sarma, Amruta
Benmarhnia, Tarik
Rajiva, Ajit
Azhar, Gulrez Shah
Gupta, Prakash
Pednekar, Mangesh S.
Bell, Michelle L.
author_facet Nori-Sarma, Amruta
Benmarhnia, Tarik
Rajiva, Ajit
Azhar, Gulrez Shah
Gupta, Prakash
Pednekar, Mangesh S.
Bell, Michelle L.
author_sort Nori-Sarma, Amruta
collection PubMed
description Health effects of heat waves with high baseline temperatures in areas such as India remain a critical research gap. In these regions, extreme temperatures may affect the underlying population’s adaptive capacity; heat wave alerts should be optimized to avoid continuous high alert status and enhance constrained resources, especially under a changing climate. Data from registrars and meteorological departments were collected for four communities in Northwestern India. Propensity Score Matching (PSM) was used to obtain the relative risk of mortality and number of attributable deaths (i.e., absolute risk which incorporates the number of heat wave days) under a variety of heat wave definitions (n = 13) incorporating duration and intensity. Heat waves’ timing in season was also assessed for potential effect modification. Relative risk of heat waves (risk of mortality comparing heat wave days to matched non-heat wave days) varied by heat wave definition and ranged from 1.28 [95% Confidence Interval: 1.11–1.46] in Churu (utilizing the 95th percentile of temperature for at least two consecutive days) to 1.03 [95% CI: 0.87–1.23] in Idar and Himmatnagar (utilizing the 95th percentile of temperature for at least four consecutive days). The data trended towards a higher risk for heat waves later in the season. Some heat wave definitions displayed similar attributable mortalities despite differences in the number of identified heat wave days. These findings provide opportunities to assess the “efficiency” (or number of days versus potential attributable health impacts) associated with alternative heat wave definitions. Findings on both effect modification and trade-offs between number of days identified as “heat wave” versus health effects provide tools for policy makers to determine the most important criteria for defining thresholds to trigger heat wave alerts.
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spelling pubmed-66171332019-07-18 Advancing our Understanding of Heat Wave Criteria and Associated Health Impacts to Improve Heat Wave Alerts in Developing Country Settings Nori-Sarma, Amruta Benmarhnia, Tarik Rajiva, Ajit Azhar, Gulrez Shah Gupta, Prakash Pednekar, Mangesh S. Bell, Michelle L. Int J Environ Res Public Health Article Health effects of heat waves with high baseline temperatures in areas such as India remain a critical research gap. In these regions, extreme temperatures may affect the underlying population’s adaptive capacity; heat wave alerts should be optimized to avoid continuous high alert status and enhance constrained resources, especially under a changing climate. Data from registrars and meteorological departments were collected for four communities in Northwestern India. Propensity Score Matching (PSM) was used to obtain the relative risk of mortality and number of attributable deaths (i.e., absolute risk which incorporates the number of heat wave days) under a variety of heat wave definitions (n = 13) incorporating duration and intensity. Heat waves’ timing in season was also assessed for potential effect modification. Relative risk of heat waves (risk of mortality comparing heat wave days to matched non-heat wave days) varied by heat wave definition and ranged from 1.28 [95% Confidence Interval: 1.11–1.46] in Churu (utilizing the 95th percentile of temperature for at least two consecutive days) to 1.03 [95% CI: 0.87–1.23] in Idar and Himmatnagar (utilizing the 95th percentile of temperature for at least four consecutive days). The data trended towards a higher risk for heat waves later in the season. Some heat wave definitions displayed similar attributable mortalities despite differences in the number of identified heat wave days. These findings provide opportunities to assess the “efficiency” (or number of days versus potential attributable health impacts) associated with alternative heat wave definitions. Findings on both effect modification and trade-offs between number of days identified as “heat wave” versus health effects provide tools for policy makers to determine the most important criteria for defining thresholds to trigger heat wave alerts. MDPI 2019-06-13 2019-06 /pmc/articles/PMC6617133/ /pubmed/31200449 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16122089 Text en © 2019 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Nori-Sarma, Amruta
Benmarhnia, Tarik
Rajiva, Ajit
Azhar, Gulrez Shah
Gupta, Prakash
Pednekar, Mangesh S.
Bell, Michelle L.
Advancing our Understanding of Heat Wave Criteria and Associated Health Impacts to Improve Heat Wave Alerts in Developing Country Settings
title Advancing our Understanding of Heat Wave Criteria and Associated Health Impacts to Improve Heat Wave Alerts in Developing Country Settings
title_full Advancing our Understanding of Heat Wave Criteria and Associated Health Impacts to Improve Heat Wave Alerts in Developing Country Settings
title_fullStr Advancing our Understanding of Heat Wave Criteria and Associated Health Impacts to Improve Heat Wave Alerts in Developing Country Settings
title_full_unstemmed Advancing our Understanding of Heat Wave Criteria and Associated Health Impacts to Improve Heat Wave Alerts in Developing Country Settings
title_short Advancing our Understanding of Heat Wave Criteria and Associated Health Impacts to Improve Heat Wave Alerts in Developing Country Settings
title_sort advancing our understanding of heat wave criteria and associated health impacts to improve heat wave alerts in developing country settings
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6617133/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31200449
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16122089
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