Health Interventions

Project Overview

We are currently conducting a study to evaluate the effectiveness of an intervention to reduce illness and death due to extreme heat.

What is the intervention?

The intervention is a facilitated engagement between city and county health departments and researchers using the Climate Health and Risk Tool. The Climate Health and Risk Tool is an online tool that provides data on heat-health risks at a highly local scale, for both historical and future conditions. It also provides tailored policymakers with suggested risk reduction activities, based on local factors, and information about the efficacy, timing, and cost of each intervention.

The facilitated engagement will involve an introduction to the platform, real-time questions and answers with researchers regarding heat and health risk, and focused discussion with researchers regarding priority interventions and planning and implementation needs.

How will you study the effectiveness of the intervention?

We will recruit 30 city and county health departments from across Washington, Wyoming, Montana, Alaska and Idaho. We will assess the breadth and effectiveness of each health department’s activities to reduce health risks in extreme heat. Our assessment will leverage an established framework for evaluating interventions, the Reach, Effectiveness, Adoption, Implementation and Maintenance (RE-AIM) framework.

Then, half of the departments will be randomly assigned to the intervention group, and the other half to the control group. The intervention group will receive facilitated engagement with the Climate and Health Risk Tool. The control group will receive information about climate change and health, but not a facilitated engagement with the tool.

After one year, we will reassess the breadth and effectiveness of each department's activities to reduce health risks in extreme heat. We will also conduct interviews with individuals in the intervention group to identify barriers and facilitators of CHaRT implementation.

What are the anticipated outcomes and impacts of the intervention?

• This study will provide better understanding of how local health departments can implement the Climate Health and Risk Tool, and how scientists can support health departments in using the tool.
• This study will also develop a novel framework for using the Reach, Effectiveness, Adoption, Implementation and Maintenance (RE-AIM framework) in climate change adaptation work.
• The results of this study will support future implementation science research related to climate and health adaptation.

Join the Study

Eligibility

Any city or county health department in Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana or Idaho is eligible to participate in this study.

Recruitment

We are recruiting health departments for this study through June 2025. We will stop recruiting once we have 30 participating health departments.

Anticipated commitment

All departments will complete an online survey at the beginning of the project and another one year later.

Departments in the intervention group will spend an additional five hours in facilitated engagement sessions with the CHaRT tool, and an additional one hour for a follow-up interview at the end of the intervention.

Departments in the control group will have no additional time commitment besides the two surveys.

Benefits

Participants in the intervention group will receive:

• An introduction to the Climate Health and Risk Tool platform
• Real-time questions and answers with researchers regarding heat and health risk
• Focused discussion with researchers regarding priority interventions and planning and implementation needs.

Participants in the control group will receive information about reducing health risks in extreme heat, including:

• An annotated list of online resources, including those available on Heat.gov and the CDC website
• A selected set of review papers on heat-health vulnerability, heat-health risk assessment, heat hazard mitigation through built environment strategies, and heat action planning and preparedness.

Regardless of whether they are part of the intervention or control group, each department will receive $1,000 on enrollment, $1,500 on completion of the pre-intervention assessment, and $2,500 on completion of the post-intervention assessment.

Contact

If you are interested in enrolling your health department in this research study, please talk to someone in your agency who is authorized to make decisions about participation before moving forward. Once you have obtained approval, complete our interest form. Because this is a research study, we are not able to enroll every department that expresses interest. We appreciate your understanding.