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Mapping Community Risks to Climate Change
EPA ASPH Fellow Colleen E. Reid and NCER funded researchers Marie S. O’Neill, Carina Gronlund, Shannon J. Brines, Daniel G. Brown, Ana V. Diez-Roux and, Joel Schwartz have published a paper in EHP defining an approach to identify population segments in specific geographic regions susceptible to adverse effects of heat waves. Cities can use this information to help coordinate heat emergency plans and identify interventions to reduce the preventable health effects of heat waves.
The study gathered available information on several factors that have been associated with adverse health impacts from heat waves to identify vulnerable populations. These factors included lower education, poverty, race, lack of green space, living alone, lack of air conditioning, older age, and presence of diabetes. These data were compiled into a national map of county-level heat vulnerability. This map suggested that heat vulnerability could vary widely across the nation due primarily to differences in air conditioning prevalence. In urban areas, inner cities were likely to be more vulnerable to heat regardless of the city’s overall vulnerability.
This study is a novel national approach to map vulnerability to a health outcome related to climate change and can be considered a first step towards developing tools that can help public health professionals prepare climate change adaptation plans for their communities.
For full EHP article: http://www.ehponline.org/members/2009/0900683/0900683.pdf 
For more information on this STAR research see: Heat-related Hospital Admissions Among the Elderly: Community, Socio-economic and Medical Determinants of Vulnerability and Economic Impacts.