Research Project Core

SUMMARY – RESEARCH PROJECT This project will characterize intra-urban disparities in the effects of extreme heat on mortality and examine individual-level and neighborhood factors associated with these disparities. Understanding these disparities is critical for the development of urban policies and practices aimed at reducing the impacts of extreme weather on urban populations. The combination of high levels of urbanization and associated heat island effect, an aging population, and pre-existing health conditions including high rates of chronic diseases makes urban populations particularly susceptible to the effects of extreme weather. However intra-urban disparities associated with neighborhood and individual-level characteristics have not been systematically examined across multiple settings. A better understanding of how the impacts of heat on health vary across and within cities is critical to design policies needed to minimize adverse impacts. The overall goal of this project is to conduct policy-relevant extreme weather and health research by studying intra-urban disparities in the impact of extreme heat across cities with different geographic, social, and demographic characteristics. We will investigate both neighborhood and individual-level factors and disentangle impacts of differential exposure to heat and differential effects of heat using a novel approach we will develop in collaboration with the Research and Capacity Building Core. We will leverage expertise on health disparities, biostatistics, urban planning, and policy translation. We will accomplish the following aims: 1) estimate intra-city heterogeneity in the temperature-mortality association; 2) investigate associations of neighborhood social, built, and natural environment factors with differential heat impacts on mortality; and 3) study the differential impact of heat on mortality by age, sex, race/ethnicity, and education. We will contribute to the data infrastructure created by the Administrative Core, advance methods development and training in partnership with the Research Capacity Building Core, and coordinate engagement of policymakers with the Community Engagement Core. Specifically, we will develop dissemination and engagement strategies using the results of our research projects. The analytical approach developed to study heat impacts will create a foundation that can later be extended to other extreme weather events.