Heat Resilience and Health
This theme sheds light on the links between extreme heat and health, highlighting the challenges and impacts of climate change on healthcare systems, the opportunities for adaptation, as well as examples of tested strategies.
Focus group #5, pilot region Dresden, healthcare workers
Results of one of the focus groups in the pilot region Dresden. Healthcare workers were invited to talk about heatwaves, their experience with and what could help to handle them.
Renewable heating and cooling for a hospital
In Madrid’s Severo Ochoa Hospital, a pilot project uses a booster heat pump to capture and upgrade waste heat from the hospital’s cooling chillers for district heating—reducing reliance on cooling towers and improving energy efficiency year-round.
The importance of investing in the energy refurbishment of hospitals: Results of a case study in a Mediterranean climate
This study demonstrates how an energy audit of a university building in Italy informed strategies to improve Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) performance, enhance indoor environmental quality, and reduce energy consumption through targeted retrofitting measures.
An adaptation strategy to urban heat: hospital rooms with radiant cooling accelerate patient recovery
Equipping hospital rooms with radiant cooling at a constant comfortable temperature notably quickens discharge, stabilizes vital signs, reduces fluid consumption, and boosts activity levels in patients with respiratory conditions during summer months.
Heatwaves, hospitals and health system resilience in England: a qualitative assessment of frontline perspectives from the hot summer of 2019
This study shows how the 2019 heatwave disrupted hospital care in England, highlighting infrastructure weaknesses, staff awareness gaps, and competing priorities, and calls for stronger adaptation planning and investment to build health system resilience to extreme heat.
UK Hot Weather Health Plan (Society for Acute Medicine)
This document provides practical guidance for UK acute care clinicians to prepare for and manage the health impacts of extreme heat, focusing on protecting vulnerable patients, adapting clinical practice, and maintaining safe hospital environments during heatwaves.
Extreme heat, hospital crowding, and the hidden health costs of climate change
This column considers extreme heat as not only a direct health threat, but also a systems-level shock that will expose and exacerbate existing vulnerabilities in healthcare delivery.
Nurses Climate Challenge Europe: A campaign to engage health professionals on the impacts of climate change on health
Launched in 2021, the Nurses Climate Challenge Europe provides free online resources, and fosters networking among nurses to integrate climate knowledge into their practice, leveraging success from a previously established US-based counterpart.