Risks to Health and Health Services from Extreme Heat (Edge Health and Greencroft Economics)

About this document

The Climate Change Committee (CCC) commissioned Edge Health and Greencroft Economics to assess the present and future burden of extreme heat on health outcomes and healthcare services across the UK, and how adaptation could reduce these risks.

The research aimed to understand a cost-optimal adaptation response at a national scale, focusing on actions delivered across public health and health and social care settings.

This report reflects the views of Edge Health and Greencroft Economics and does not represent the views of the CCC.

Key messages

• Extreme-heat related mortality, A&E attendances, and emergency hospital admissions are projected to rise sharply, more tripling by the 2050s from a 1991 to 2020 baseline. The total monetised impacts of these health-related outcomes could exceed £4 billion by the 2050s.
  
• The largest absolute impacts to health projected to be concentrated in London and Southern England, but the steepest proportional increases occur in northern regions historically unaccustomed to high temperatures. Extreme heat-related deaths and heat-related hospital admissions were found to be concentrated in the over 75 age group.
  
• Heat also affects the functioning of hospitals. Overheated clinical spaces, increased staff absenteeism, and reductions in workforce productivity disrupt day-to-day operations, including theatre activity and planned care. These pressures spill into social care, with heat-related strokes and long-term conditions driving additional demand and associated costs.
  
• The modelled adaptation package includes measures to reduce demand on healthcare during extreme heat events, and supply side measures to improve the resilience of health care facilities and ability of professionals to provide care. Implementing this package reduces the monetised impacts by more than the cost of these adaptation actions and improves comfort and wellbeing of people, patients, and staff during extreme heat
  

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