Surveying Local Health Departments and County Emergency Management Offices on Cooling Centers as a Heat Adaptation Resource in New York State

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• 作者：Seema G. Nayak ; Shao Lin ; Scott C. Sheridan ; Yi Lu…
• 关键词：Cooling centers ; Extreme heat ; Cooling sites ; County agencies ; Heat adaptation resources
• 刊名：Journal of Community Health
• 出版年：2017
• 出版时间：February 2017
• 年：2017
• 卷：42
• 期：1
• 页码：43-50
• 全文大小：
• 刊物类别：Medicine
• 刊物主题：Health Promotion and Disease Prevention; Community and Environmental Psychology; Ethics;
• 出版者：Springer US
• ISSN：1573-3610
• 卷排序：42

文摘

Local agencies in New York State (NYS) set up cooling centers to provide relief from summer-time heat especially for people with limited access to air-conditioning. We aimed to determine cooling center locations in NYS, and explore county agencies’ involvement in organizing and promoting utilization of cooling centers. We conducted a survey among county health and emergency preparedness offices in NYS (excluding NYC) and explored official county websites. We identified 377 cooling centers, mostly in metropolitan areas of NYS. Although 47 % of counties listed locations online, only 29 % reported locations via survey. Radio (90 %) and internet (84 %) were popular for information dissemination. Air-conditioning was available at all indoor cooling center facilities. Cooling centers in 13 % of the counties were accessible by either public transportation or shuttles arranged by the facility. About 38 % counties do not consider cooling centers important in their region or promote informal cooling centers. More than a third of New York counties had neither cooling centers nor plans to establish a cooling center as extreme heat was not perceived as a threat in their region.