Our investigation revealed how today’s heat illnesses connect to decades-old discrimination.
We focused on heat-related illnesses in Arizona and Florida, two states that have seen sharp spikes in summertime temperatures over the last century. While Arizona is considered the hottest state in the U.S., and Phoenix the hottest city, in Florida the combination of heat and humidity makes it one of the nation’s most dangerous places.
The investigation looked into federal data on emergency room visits and hospitalizations in both states and then identified the ZIP codes with higher rates of heat-related illnesses. Then we looked into the socioeconomics of those areas and conducted shoe-leather work to find what was behind the data. We discovered that the top ZIP codes with higher rates of heat-related illnesses in both states are low-income neighborhoods with a long history of racial segregation.
Our story also showed that in these investment-starved areas, hurt by racist policies like redlining, people are neglected by local governments failing to robustly prepare for and mitigate the increasing heat.
What’s unique about the main analysis underlying this story: It uses real patient data. Many heat-related health analyses in both the media and scientific literature use vulnerability indices to estimate where people are most at risk for heat illness, based on temperature and demographic data. We believe we are the first to do statewide analyses using patient data to identify the ZIP codes where the rates of heat illness are actually highest.
Acquiring and analyzing that data was challenging, which is why it’s rarely attempted.