Heat-Related Mortality Surveillance — Maricopa County, Arizona 2023–2024
- Presentation Day/Time: Wednesday, April 22, 3:20 PM
- Presenter: Saba Qasmieh, PhD, MPH, Maricopa County Department of Public Health, Arizona
The Issue
- Arizona leads the nation in heat-related deaths. In Maricopa County, epidemiologists abstract circumstantial characteristics of these deaths into its surveillance system through a manual review of preliminary investigative reports completed by the Office of Medical Examiner (OME) death investigators, which requires substantial staff-time burden during heat seasons.
What We Did
- We compared heat-specific circumstantial characteristics entered into heat attribute fields (HAF) by OME death investigators for cause-of-death determination with data gathered from manual abstraction to assess the feasibility of using HAF as a more efficient way to gather this information.
What We Found
- The manual review and data abstraction process for 1,235 confirmed heat-related deaths required 412 person-hours over a two-year period. Agreement between HAF and heat surveillance system data for substance use was 88%, but agreement of data on air conditioner presence and functional status could not be assessed due to differences in data collection and abstraction practices.
What This Means
- Supplemental heat-specific fields completed by OME can be used by health departments to improve efficiency of capturing characteristics of heat-related deaths for heat-related interventions. Efforts to harmonize HAF with existing heat surveillance might improve timely heat-related mortality surveillance.
