Extreme weather events tied to increased mortality and emergency department activity
Mass General Brigham study reveals that ED visits and death are heightened weeks after major climate-driven extreme weather events – highlighting the long-lasting impacts these events may have on health and infrastructure
2024-02-29
(Press-News.org) Climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of severe weather events, which may particularly endanger vulnerable populations such as the elderly. Researchers from Mass General Brigham and colleagues examined how weather disasters between 2011 and 2016 influenced healthcare delivery and mortality among Medicare beneficiaries in affected counties, finding that one week after major weather events, emergency department (ED) use and mortality remained elevated by 1.22% and 1.4%, respectively, from pre-disaster levels. Importantly, this study also found that deaths remained elevated for as much as six weeks. Results are published in Nature Medicine.
Researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, founding members of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system, collaborated on the study. Identifying events from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), the team analyzed acute disasters such as floods, storms and hurricanes that caused $1 billion or more in damages. Severe storms, compared to other disasters, were associated with the highest mortality rates that persisted for six weeks. Counties with the greatest economic losses were found to have two to four times higher mortality rates – and higher ED usage – compared to all affected counties, highlighting how infrastructure destruction, such as power outages and transportation challenges, may compound both economic and healthcare tolls.
“Taken together, these findings suggest that the biggest weather disasters have broad and long-lasting impacts on health emergencies and deaths among those who have Medicare,” said lead author Renee Salas, MD, MS, MPH, of the Department of Emergency Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. “Tracking these outcomes is important to better protect patients and communities – and to strengthen our health systems.”
Authorship: Mass General Brigham affiliated co-authors include E. John Orav (BWH). Additional co-authors include Laura G. Burke, Jessica Phelan, Gregory A. Wellenius, and Ashish K. Jha.
Disclosures: Salas reports no disclosures. Additional author disclosures are included in the article.
Funding: This research was funded by the Burke Global Health Fellowship at the Harvard Global Health Institute, the Clinician-Teacher Development Award at the Center for Diversity and Inclusion at Massachusetts General Hospital, and the Yerby Fellowship at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. A full list of funding to individual authors is included in the article.
Paper cited: Salas RN et al. “Impact of extreme weather events on healthcare utilization and mortality in the United States” Nature Medicine DOI: 10.1038/s41591-024-02833-x.
###
About Mass General Brigham
Mass General Brigham is an integrated academic health care system, uniting great minds to solve the hardest problems in medicine for our communities and the world. Mass General Brigham connects a full continuum of care across a system of academic medical centers, community and specialty hospitals, a health insurance plan, physician networks, community health centers, home care, and long-term care services. Mass General Brigham is a nonprofit organization committed to patient care, research, teaching, and service to the community. In addition, Mass General Brigham is one of the nation’s leading biomedical research organizations with several Harvard Medical School teaching hospitals. For more information, please visit massgeneralbrigham.org.
END
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2024-02-29
For more than a decade, invasive Asian honeybees have defied evolutionary expectations and established a thriving population in North Queensland, much to the annoyance of the honey industry and biosecurity officials.
Research published today in Current Biology has shown the species, Apis cerana, has overcome what is known as a genetic bottleneck to grow from a single swarm into a population of more than 10,000 colonies over a 10,000 square kilometre area – which is about the size of Greater Sydney.
Co-lead author Dr Rosalyn Gloag from the University of Sydney School of Life and Environmental Sciences said: “Our study of this bee population shows that some species can ...
2024-02-29
Several areas of the globe — including the Bay of Bengal, the Philippines, and the Caribbean Sea — are likely to experience record-breaking average surface air temperatures in the year period up to June 2024 as a result of the ongoing El Niño phenomenon. The modelling results, published in Scientific Reports, also suggest that there is an estimated 90 percent chance of record-breaking global mean surface temperatures occurring over the same period under a moderate or strong El Niño scenario.
The El Niño-Southern Oscillation, centred ...
2024-02-29
About The Study: This study of 536 participants identified changes in patient portal use over time and highlighted populations that had lower access to health information. The COVID-19 pandemic was associated with an increase in portal use. Sociodemographic disparities by sex and age were reduced, although disparities by health literacy widened. A brief validated health literacy measure may serve as a useful digital literacy screening tool to identify patients who need further support.
Authors: Esther Yoon, Ph.D., M.P.H., M.S., of Northwestern University in Chicago, is the corresponding ...
2024-02-29
About The Study: The findings of this study of 34,500 patients suggest that racial and ethnic disparities in locally advanced rectal cancer treatment outcomes may be multifactorial, with an independent association with non-Hispanic Black race, suggesting unidentified biological variables or social determinants of health that warrant exploration.
Authors: Sanjeevani Arora, Ph.D., and Shannon M. Lynch, Ph.D., M.P.H., of the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia, are the corresponding authors.
To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/
(doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.0044)
Editor’s ...
2024-02-29
Today, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) announced four multi-year grants that will bring together regional labs in California, the Mid-Atlantic, and the Research Triangle in North Carolina to explore the frontiers of genomics, cell biology, and synthetic biology by developing new measurement technologies. These projects will focus on developing technologies to engineer cell and tissue models, exploring cellular responses to genetic and environmental stressors, understanding RNA's role in metabolism, and more.
“To unravel the mysteries of the cell, we need new technologies, and the Exploratory Cell Networks grants support early-stage ...
2024-02-29
Diabetes accelerates the development of atherosclerosis, increasing the incidence of cardiovascular events. In atherosclerosis, immune cells called macrophages release molecules such as chemokines and cytokines, causing inflammation and leading to arterial plaque formation. However, significant gaps persist in understanding the exact molecular mechanisms controlling this increased inflammatory response in individuals with diabetes. In a new, preclinical study, researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system, identified a long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) sequence that could help them unravel the ...
2024-02-29
LA JOLLA, CA—Roughly 4 billion years ago, Earth was developing conditions suitable for life. Origin-of-life scientists often wonder if the type of chemistry found on the early Earth was similar to what life requires today. They know that spherical collections of fats, called protocells, were the precursor to cells during this emergence of life. But how did simple protocells first arise and diversify to eventually lead to life on Earth?
Now, Scripps Research scientists have discovered one plausible pathway for how protocells may have first formed and chemically ...
2024-02-29
– By Will Ferguson
A greater understanding of how plants and microbes work together to store vast amounts of atmospheric carbon in the soil will help in the design of better bioenergy crops for the fight against climate change.
Deciphering the mechanics of this mutually beneficial relationship is challenging, however, as conditions in nature are extremely difficult for scientists to replicate in the laboratory. To address this challenge, researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) created fabricated ecosystems or EcoFABs.
In a new paper in Science Advances, they ...
2024-02-29
Digital Science has awarded two new Catalyst Grants of £25,000 each to innovative AI-based technology ideas aimed at advancing global research.
The winners will use the funding to develop their ideas, which include using AI to alleviate the burden on researchers of applying for research funding, and to predict research impact.
The winning applications from Digital Science’s 2023 Catalyst Grant round announced today are:
Atom – Tomer du Sautoy (co-founder and CEO) and Hamilton Evans (co-founder and ...
2024-02-29
Fonio (Digitaria exilis), a type of millet, is the oldest indigenous crop in West Africa and one of the fastest maturing cereals. Despite its low yield, the combination of quick maturation and drought tolerance and its ability to thrive in poor soils make it a useful model for understanding how cereals can adapt to future climate change conditions.
Nutritionally, fonio is comparable to other millets, says KAUST researcher Naheed Tabassum, but yields are much lower than the major cereal crops rice, maize and wheat. Tabassum believes fonio could complement staple crops amid climate change and desertification ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] Extreme weather events tied to increased mortality and emergency department activity
Mass General Brigham study reveals that ED visits and death are heightened weeks after major climate-driven extreme weather events – highlighting the long-lasting impacts these events may have on health and infrastructure
