With the anticipation of additional days of hot temperatures, more than 100 health organizations are calling on state leaders to take more action on extreme heat.
The Colorado Academy of Family Physicians, Healthy Climate New Mexico, Idaho Clinicians for Climate and Health, the Arizona Public Health Association and Nevada Clinicians for Climate Action are among the groups urging states to protect the public from worsening extreme heat, one of the leading causes of weather-related deaths.
The organizations delivered a letter to the National Governors Association, which meets this week in Colorado Springs, Colo.
“The most effective way to prevent deaths and economic losses from extreme heat is to act before heat hits,” the letter states. “State-level action on extreme heat is urgently needed to minimize the growing impacts and emergent risks.”
It also asks states to implement a handful of policies, including designating someone to lead the statewide response to extreme heat; labeling extreme heat an emergency to unlock more funds and resources; funding responses to heat; and tracking heat-related illnesses.
“In many parts of the country, there's not a robust system of health surveillance,” said Grace Wickerson, who works on climate and health issues at the Federation of American Scientists, during a webinar outlining the policy objectives. “Without that baseline of the impacts, it's incredibly hard to even design effective policy.”
The letter highlighted Arizona as a state that had taken significant action recently. Last year, Gov. Katie Hobbs created an extreme heat playbook and the state’s health department appointed the first statewide Chief Heat Officer in the country, Dr. Eugene Livar.
“A big piece of what we do prior to heat season is just, hopefully, educate and make people aware of what's coming, keep people aware of the situation they're in during heat season, and then step back and do an evaluation of our efforts afterwards,” Livar said.
Between 2011 and 2022, about 40 people in the U.S. died on the job each year due to heat exposure. Still, just seven states have policies that regulate heat in the workplace, including Nevada and Colorado.
The federal Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) is currently weighing new heat protections for workers, which were proposed during the Biden Administration, but Wickerson said as President Trump moves to shrink federal agencies and limit their authority, states should lead the policy front.
This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Wyoming Public Media, Nevada Public Radio, Boise State Public Radio in Idaho, KUNR in Nevada, KUNC in Colorado and KANW in New Mexico, with support from affiliate stations across the region. Funding for the Mountain West News Bureau is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
