Policy experts from the college’s Applied Health Policy Institute recently produced a whitepaper analysis of the rise in the number of health-related deaths in Arizona for the ‘Making Action Possible for Southern Arizona’ coalition, an evaluation that could guide programs and policy to address the health impacts of more extreme heat in Arizona.
Policy experts from the Applied Health Policy Institute (AHPI) at the Zuckerman College of Public Health recently produced a whitepaper on the rise in the number of health-related deaths in Arizona titled Why Has Arizona’s Heat Related Death Rate Increased Tenfold in Twenty Years?. The report’s analysis provides important insights and valuable statistics to help evaluate policy changes and programs that could address the health impacts of more extreme heat in Arizona as our climate warms.
The community coalition ‘Making Action Possible for Southern Arizona’ (MAP) commissioned the whitepaper on Arizona’s heat-related deaths that was produced by the AHPI team and will host a webinar on Arizona’s Heat-Related Health Impacts on Wednesday, September 18. MAP partners include the Community Foundation for Southern Arizona, the UA’s Eller College of Management, the Pima Association of Governments, the Southern Arizona Leadership Council, and Sun Corridor. The research gathered by MAP can be accessed on the MAP Dashboard, mapazdashboard.arizona.edu.
From the Applied Health Policy Institute, Slade Smith, JD, assistant director for AHPI, Kirin Goff, JD, MPH, the former director of AHPI, and doctoral student Sonia Kaufman conducted the analysis and wrote the whitepaper report. It includes many helpful graphs showing the increasingly dangerous effects of extreme heat in Arizona.
Webinar: Arizona’s Heat-Related Health Impacts
The Making Action Possible coalition hosted a webinar focused on the public health challenges of increasing extreme heat in Arizona on September 18, 2024. The event was free and open to the public. Two of the speakers were from the Zuckerman College of Public Health.
Speakers for the webinar included:
- Heidi E. Brown, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Zuckerman College of Public Health, University of Arizona
- Fatima Luna, Chief Resilience Officer, City of Tucson
- Slade Smith, J.D., Assistant Director, Applied Health Policy Institute, Zuckerman College of Public Health, University of Arizona
Slade Smith discussed the results from the whitepaper "Why has Arizona's Heat-Related Death Rate Increased Tenfold in Twenty Years?" published on the MAP Dashboard.
