Two years after that event — the deadliest weather-related disaster in state history — a collaborative effort led by two ����Ӱ�Ӵ�ý teams, the Climate Impacts Group and the Center for Health and the Global Environment, or CHanGE, has drawn up recommendations for how people and groups across the state could prevent future heat-related illness and save lives.

“There’s a lot we can do, right now, to save lives in Washington,” said , interim director of the UW Climate Impacts Group. “This report is a call to action — it outlines the things that we know work. Extreme heat is a complicated governance challenge that requires coordination across levels of government, including many state agencies without a health mandate, and across the private and public sectors.”

“The report highlights the wealth of knowledge we already have about effective strategies,” said Dr. Jeremy Hess, director of CHanGE, who treated patients during the June 2021 event and helped develop a related risk-mapping tool. “We need to commit additional resources and build on early investments to protect the most vulnerable.”

The , led by the UW Climate Impacts Group and released June 20 in English and Spanish, points to solutions. There is no single fix, it argues — the best approach is a broad mix of strategies that address both short-term emergency response and long-term risk reduction. The report builds on a recent co-authored by Vogel that compared Washington’s heat dome experience against other regions that typically deal with heat. It found that many of the most common strategies, such as cooling centers, don’t work on their own. Some people might not recognize their risk, and others might lack transportation to cooling centers. Laws to protect outdoor workers, such as those recently passed in Washington, don’t work without enforcement.

The new report suggests a more comprehensive statewide strategy that could reduce illness and death during future heat events. Some of these general suggestions include:

• Providing air conditioners to low-income households, protecting tenants’ rights to install air conditioning window units, and revising building codes to require cooling in new construction
• Establishing volunteer networks to check on older or ill neighbors, those who live alone, and other high-risk residents
• Providing transportation to cooling centers
• Developing a portfolio of strategies, because redundancy is crucial
• Increasing enforcement of laws protecting outdoor workers, especially in the earliest and most dangerous days of extreme heat
• Locating toilets and shade structures close to outdoor workers, to encourage breaks
• In urban areas, increasing green roofs, tree cover and structures that provide shade

A full list of strategies is available in the , which was prepared with partners including Gonzaga University in Spokane, the Office of the Washington State Climatologist, the Washington State Department of Health and UW EarthLab.

CHanGE led development of a related, more specific heat and health tool that can help focus the report’s recommendations by tailoring them to a community’s specific risks. The (CHaRT) is interactive, which allows local decision-makers to better understand how climate, environmental, social and economic factors contribute to heat risk in their communities. Users can view the short- and long-term risk of dangerously high heat in their community and explore the various demographic, socioeconomic, geographic and medical factors that contribute to that risk.

The tool also provides guidance on how to account for a community’s specific needs, both in the short and long term. This information includes summaries of each intervention’s effectiveness, as well as expected costs and implementation timelines.

A community with many young children, for example, might consider opening splash parks and sending extra lifeguards to popular swimming spots when temperatures rise. Meanwhile, an urban community with little shade may opt to plant more trees with an eye toward long-term heat mitigation. Splash pads can be implemented quickly and have a local impact, while increasing tree canopy will take decades and can affect entire neighborhoods.

“There are two timeframes we’re trying to support action on,” said Hess, who is a professor of emergency medicine, of environmental and occupational health sciences and of global health at the UW’s School of Public Health. “One is a pretty short time frame, where you get a heat warning, it’s going to be hot seven to 10 days from now. What can you and your agencies do to prepare to support the community? How do you support the parts of the community that are most at risk?

“Then there’s the longer-term, multi-year time frame. That’s a completely different set of challenges. This tool allows for that planning on multiple time scales.”

For more information, contact Hess at jjhess@uw.edu and Vogel at jmvogel@uw.edu.

Two ����Ӱ�Ӵ�ý experts in climate change and health are lead authors of the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The new report titled , published Monday morning, details in over three thousand pages a “dire warning” about the consequences of inaction on reducing the emissions that are causing our planet to warm and on implementing interventions to prepare for and effectively manage the dangerous impacts of climate change already occurring.

“This report is a dire warning about the consequences of inaction,” said Hoesung Lee, chair of the IPCC, in a . “It shows that climate change is a grave and mounting threat to our wellbeing and a healthy planet. Our actions today will shape how people adapt and nature responds to increasing climate risks.”

����’s , professor of global health and environmental and occupational health sciences in the School of Public Health, and Dr. , professor of emergency medicine at UW School of Medicine and of environmental and occupational health sciences and of global health in the School of Public Health, are lead authors on . Ebi is also a contributing author on the IPCC’s .

Below, the UW professors discuss these threats and the critical necessity of addressing them.

Professor Ebi’s comments:

People are suffering and dying right now from climate change, with the risks projected to increase without urgent and immediate investments in health systems to protect and promote population health. The people and nature we care about in our lives are being affected, with more severe impacts occurring sooner than projected just a few years ago.

The magnitude and pattern of future climate change impacts will depend on choices made in other sectors, such as urbanization plans, efforts to manage growing wildfire risks, and modifications to water systems to account for changing rainfall patterns, and on significant and urgent investments in our health systems.

There’s a long list of effective adaption options that can increase the resilience of our health systems and our health care infrastructure, as well as strengthen the capacity of communities to be better prepared to manage changing weather patterns. The major constraint for health is the insignificant investment in this area; catch-up investments are needed that at least keep pace with climate change.

Nearly all mitigation options have benefits for health. Benefits for our health arise from reducing exposure to harmful air pollutants from emissions from point sources like coal-fired power plants, reducing transportation that relies on internal combustion engines and increasing walking and biking, and changing dietary patterns to eat healthier diets.

The economic value of avoided hospitalizations and avoided premature deaths is of the same order of magnitude if not larger than the cost of implementing these mitigation policies. These policies will benefit the health of our families, friends and colleagues, with lower healthcare costs.

We can’t stop the next heat wave, but people don’t need to die. Not facing up to the risks just puts us in a much worse situation.

The future is in our hands. We may not be able to prevent flooding events or heat waves, but we can be prepared. The choices we make going forward will determine all of our futures.

Dr. Hess’ comments:

The chapter on health, well-being and the changing structure of communities is unprecedented in the breadth and depth of its assessment. And its findings are clear: Climate change is already posing significant and widespread burdens on health, through warming temperatures, extreme heat events, changing precipitation patterns and relative humidity, more frequent and severe storms, and wildfires.

More than half of the disease burden in the world is climate sensitive, and a wide range of diseases, from vector-borne and zoonotic infections, water- and food-borne diseases, injuries and a host of chronic noncommunicable diseases, are all affected.

The report highlights the clear risks to mental health, as well.

Estimates of future risks to health depend heavily on future greenhouse gas emissions, trends in socioeconomic development, rates of population increase, and patterns of aging and urbanization. Under high emissions scenarios, risks associated with heat, undernutrition, diarrheal diseases, and select vector-borne diseases will increase.

The report clearly highlights an overarching need for coordinated climate change adaptation across all sectors, including health, with emphasis on addressing social inequities and other underlying factors that drive vulnerability to climate change impacts.

In the health sector, this means investing in the climate resilience of health systems, increasing universal access to basic health care, developing heat action plans and other early warning systems, supporting efforts to reduce heat risk on the population level, enhancing surveillance for climate-sensitive conditions, controlling disease vectors and developing vaccines for vector-borne diseases, and reducing emissions from health care delivery.

Efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions yield substantial health dividends that, in most cases, pay for the mitigation efforts themselves.

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Ebi is the founding director and Hess is the director of the ����’s . Contributing UW authors for Chapter 7 of the IPCC report are , associate professor of environmental and occupational health sciences, and , assistant teaching professor of environmental and occupational health sciences, in the UW School of Public Health. Also,��, associate professor of environmental and occupational health sciences in the UW School of Public Health, was a contributing author to of the full report.

Twenty scientists and engineers at the ����Ӱ�Ӵ�ý are among the 38 new members elected to the Washington State Academy of Sciences for 2021, according to a July 15 . New members were chosen for “their outstanding record of scientific and technical achievement, and their willingness to work on behalf of the Academy to bring the best available science to bear on issues within the state of Washington.”

Current academy members selected 29 of the new members. An additional nine were elected by virtue of joining one of the National Academies.

New UW members who were elected by current academy members are:

• , professor and Port of Tacoma Chair in Environmental Science at UW Tacoma, director of the and science director of the , “for foundational work on the environmental fate, behavior and toxicity of PCBs.”
• , professor of psychology, “for contributions in research on racial and gender inequality that has influenced practices in education, government, and business” and “for shifting the explanation for inequality away from individual deficiencies and examining how societal stereotypes and structures cause inequalities.”
• , professor of chemistry and member faculty at the , “for leadership in the innovative synthesis and chemical modification of nanoscale materials for application in light emission and catalysis.”
• , professor of global health and of environmental and occupational health sciences, and founding director of the , “for work on the health impacts of climate change, on climate impact forecasting, on adaptation to climate change and on climate policy to protect health.”
• , professor of environmental and forest sciences and dean emeritus of the College of the Environment, “for foundational studies of regional paleoenvironmental history and sustained excellence in academic leadership to catalyze and sustain transformative research and educational initiatives.” Graumlich is also president-elect of the American Geophysical Union.
• Dr. , the Joseph W. Eschbach Endowed Chair in Kidney Research and co-director of the , “for pioneering contributions and outstanding achievements in the development of the novel wearable artificial kidney, as well as numerous investigator-initiated clinical trials and multi-center collaborative studies.”
• , professor of environmental chemistry and chair of the Physical Sciences Division at UW Bothell, “for leadership in monitoring and understanding the global transport of atmospheric pollutants from energy production, wildfire, and other sources, as well as science communication and service that has informed citizens and enhanced public policy.”
• , professor and chair of psychology, “for contributions demonstrating how psychological science can inform long-standing issues about racial and gender discrimination” and “for research that has deep and penetrating implications for the law and societal efforts to remedy social inequities with evidence-based programs and actions.”
• , the Leon C. Johnson Professor of Chemistry, member faculty at the and chair of the Department of Chemistry, “for developing new spectroscopy tools for measuring energy flow in molecules and materials with high spatial and temporal resolution.”
• , professor of astronomy, “for founding the and leading the decades-long development of the interdisciplinary modeling framework and community needed to establish the science of exoplanet astrobiology” and “for training the next generation of interdisciplinary scientists who will search for life beyond Earth.”
• , professor and chair of aeronautics and astronautics, “for leadership and significant advances in nonlinear methods for integrated sensing and control in engineered, bioinspired and biological flight systems” and “for leadership in cross-disciplinary aerospace workforce development.”
• , associate professor of chemistry and member faculty with the Molecular Engineering and Sciences Institute, “for exceptional contributions to the development of synthetic polymers and nanomaterials for self-assembly and advanced manufacturing with application in sustainability, medicine and microelectronics.”
• Dr. , Associate Dean of Medical Technology Innovation in the College of Engineering and the School of Medicine, the Graham and Brenda Siddall Endowed Chair in Cornea Research, and medical director of the UW Eye Institute, “for developing and providing first class clinical treatment of severe corneal blindness to hundreds of people, for establishing the world premier artificial cornea program in Washington, and for leading collaborative research to translate innovative engineering technologies into creative clinical solution.”
• Dr. , professor of medicine and director of the , “for global recognition as an authority on drug and vaccine development for viral and parasitic diseases through work as an infectious disease physician and immunologist.”
• Dr. , professor of pediatrics and of anesthesiology and pain medicine, and director of the , “for outstanding leadership in pediatric anesthesiology and in the care of children with traumatic brain injury” and “for internationally recognized expertise in traumatic brain injury and direction of the Harborview Injury Prevention and Research Center for the last decade as an exceptional mentor and visionary leader.”

UW members who will join the Washington State Academy of Sciences by virtue of their election to one of the National Academies are:

• , professor of biostatistics, “for the development of novel statistical models for longitudinal data to better diagnose disease, track its trajectory, and predict its outcomes” and “for revolutionizing how dynamic predictors are judged by their discrimination and calibration and has significantly advanced methods for randomized controlled trials.” Heagerty was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2021.
• , the Bill and Melinda Gates Chair in Computer Science and Engineering, “for foundational contributions to the mathematics of computer systems and of the internet, as well as to the design and probabilistic analysis of algorithms, especially on-line algorithms, and algorithmic mechanism design and game theory.” Karlin was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2021.
• , professor emeritus of applied mathematics and data science fellow at the , “for inventing key algorithms for hyperbolic conservation laws and transforming them into powerful numerical technologies” and “for creating the Clawpack package, which underpins a wide range of application codes in everyday use, such as for hazard assessment due to tsunamis and other geophysical phenomena.” LeVeque was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2021.
• , the Benjamin D. Hall Endowed Chair in Basic Life Sciences and an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, “for advancing our physical understanding of cell motility and growth in animals and bacteria” and “for discovering how the pathogen Listeria uses actin polymerization to move inside human cells, how crawling animal cells coordinate actomyosin dynamics and the mechanical basis of size control and daughter cell separation in bacteria.” Theriot was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2021.
• , professor and chair of biological structure, “for elucidating cellular transformations through which neurons pattern their dendrites, and the interplay of activity-dependent and -independent mechanisms leading to assembly of stereotyped circuits” and “for revelations regarding the fundamental principles of neuronal development through the application of an elegant combination of in vivo imaging, physiology, ultrastructure and genetics to the vertebrate retina.” Wong was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2021.

New members to the Washington State Academy of Sciences are scheduled to be inducted at a meeting in September.