By Robyn Stone and Natasha Bryant
What can providers of aging services do to help older adults prevent the adverse outcomes associated with heat waves? LTSS researchers have suggestions.
As we began writing this message from our air-conditioned offices at LeadingAge last week, weather forecasters were predicting that a “marathon heat wave” would begin in California on July 2 and last through the long holiday weekend. By the end of the weekend, excessive heat was expected to impact Washington, Oregon, and Nevada and then move across the southeast.
We’ve become accustomed to this kind of weather news—and we’ve learned how to respond. When a late-June heatwave brought triple-digit temperatures to Washington, DC, for example, Mayor Muriel Bowser immediately declared a heat emergency, unleashing a host of life-saving actions. Recreation centers and senior centers began doubling as cooling centers. The Department of Aging and Community Living started checking in on at-risk individuals. Maps and transportation to cooling centers were provided. Warnings about the signs of heat exhaustion and heat stroke were shared.
We responded, too. We began to worry.
We worried about the older people who didn’t have air conditioning, turned off their units to save on electricity bills, didn’t know about the cooling centers, or had no way to reach them. We worried about older citizens who wouldn’t recognize the signs of dehydration or heat stroke until it was too late. Despite the district’s best intentions, we worried about everyone who would fall through the cracks, especially those older adults with no social networks and no access to social media.
As co-authors of a recently published book chapter about climate change and older adults, we knew all too well that older adults are highly vulnerable to bad outcomes associated with all types of extreme weather caused by climate change, including extreme heat. The World Health Organization reports that heat-related mortality for people over 65 increased by approximately 85% between 2000-2004 and 2017-2021.
Adding to our anxiety was a 2021 article in Harvard Medicine, which reported that older adults respond to excessive heat differently than people in other age groups. Indeed, they often have trouble knowing when they’re dehydrated. According to author Stephanie Dutchen, “Older bodies … hold more heat than younger ones when the temperature climbs. Glands don’t release as much sweat. The heart doesn’t circulate blood as well, so less heat is released from vessels in the skin. Systems from the cardiovascular to the immune struggle to compensate.”
Clearly, heat waves are serious business.
As the summer of 2024 continues, we urge providers of aging services to take a few critical steps to ensure that your residents, clients, and the older people living in the neighborhoods surrounding your communities remain healthy.
Get to know people who are vulnerable to heat-related illness. This group includes the people who live independently in your life plan community, rent an apartment in your affordable housing community, or live at home and receive your services. It also includes older people who live in the neighborhoods surrounding your community. Reach out and educate them about the dangers of excessive heat. Anticipate their needs during a heat event. Help them make a plan to prevent heat-related illness.
Empower your team. Make sure everyone on your team knows how to prevent heat-related illnesses, recognize the symptoms of those illnesses as early as possible, and take life-saving steps if illness occurs. Enlist your home health aides to act as first responders for your home care clients. These team members can educate home care clients, recognize when they are developing heat-related illnesses, and respond to emergencies. They can ask neighbors to check in periodically with older adults living alone until temperatures moderate.
Find partners to help. You don’t have to tackle disaster-related planning by yourself. Form partnerships with local governments—particularly local health departments and agencies on aging, churches, community-based organizations, fire departments, and volunteers who can work with you to ensure the safety of older people living in the community. These coalitions are essential not only during heat waves but also during other climate-related weather events like hurricanes, floods, or wildfires.
The heat waves we experienced over the first weeks of this summer should serve as a wake-up call for us all. As advocates for older people around the nation, providers of aging services can’t sit back and wait for government agencies to prioritize older people in their response to these and other weather events.
We must do our part to protect the people we serve and ensure that those living outside our communities don’t fall through the cracks.