EOT 401 North Carolina Heat Wave

In this episode, host Emilia Rivadeneira provides a news roundup and speaks with Dr. Ashley Ward, director of the Heat Policy Innovation Hub at Duke University's Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment, and Sustainability, about the heat wave that has taken over several areas of North Carolina, including the Triangle. Dr. Ward explores the impacts of the heat wave on local communities and the environment, gives recommendations for North Carolinians and provides potential future solutions to boost heat resilience in our community. For more information on the issue of extreme heat, visit the Heat Policy Innovation Hub's website.

Creators & Guests

Host

Emilia Rivadeneira

Public Affairs Director (2024)

What is Eye on the Triangle?

Eye on the Triangle is WKNC 88.1 FM HD-1/HD-2’s weekly public affairs programming with news, interviews, opinion, weather, sports, arts, music, events and issues that matter to NC State, Raleigh and the Triangle.

Emilia Rivadeneira 0:00
The views and opinions expressed during Eye on the Triangle do not represent WKNC or NC State Student media.

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Good morning everyone. Hope you're enjoying your day. My name is Emilia Rivadeneira host of Eye on the Triangle, and with further ado, let's get into some news.

After suspending fares during the COVID-19 pandemic, GoTriangle has returned collecting fares on July 1, 2024. GoRaleigh will also return charging for trips on August 1, 2024. According to the News and Observer, GoTriangle has announced that users who download and create an account on the UMA mobility app will be eligible for free rides during July. People age 13 to 18 and over 65 may also travel for free on GoTriangle and GoRaleigh by enrolling in one of UMA's go pass programs. GoTriangle will charge $2.50 for rides and GoRaleigh trips will cost $1.25. Passengers can either pay in cash with exact change, buy digital tickets or a go pass on the free UMO app, or acquire a physical go pass UMO card at the pass sales office at the Go triangle Regional Transit Center in Durham, GoDurham, Chapel Hill transit and GoCary will remain fare free in the Triangle. As for the NC State community, according to NC State's Transportation website, NC State's faculty, staff and students can request a free go pass to Ride the GoTriangle buses. For more information, visit transportation.ncsu.edu. The Amazon series this summer, I Turned Pretty has taken over UNC s campus and parts of downtown Chapel Hill to shoot its forthcoming season. According to the news and observer, UNC will become Finch College, the fictional College of the series, on Monday, July 8, 2024 several people were seen on East Franklin Street, hoping to meet actors Christopher Briney and Lola Tong, who played Conrad Fisher and Isabel belly Conkling. Filming will continue today. Cameron Avenue, the main road through UNC campus will be closed between Columbia and Raleigh streets from 9am to 11pm

finally, According to the Daily Tar Heel, England's Manchester City and Scotland's Celtic football teams will meet at UNC Kennan stadium on july 23 2024 at 7pm the game is part of the 2024 FC series, which consists of friendly matches designed to warm up and prepare players for the professional season. Tickets vary from $65 to $400 a part of the revenues will be given to the UNC Children's Hospital. The town of Carrboro will finance a trolley service that will carry tourists between downtown Carrboro and Chapel Hill, connecting shops, restaurants and bars, the football match is predicted to be beneficial for businesses around the area, as the summer months are slower thanks in part to a smaller student population. Chapel Hill is no stranger to hosting football matches, as last year, it hosted a game between Chelsea Football Club and Wrexham association football club that drew more than 50,500 people and generated over $15 million in revenue for Chapel Hill and surrounding regions. Members of the community are hoping that this year's game will have an impact like last year's match.

Well, those

were the weekly news curated by yours truly coming up next get ready for an exclusive interview with a special guest. West diving deep into an important topic for our community, especially during the summer days. Stay tuned as we uncover insights, explore solutions and ignite a conversation that's as hot as the weather itself. You

music, hello and welcome to wknc. Eye on the triangle, your source of local news where we dive deep into the pressing issues affecting our communities. I'm your host, Emilia rinedra, and today we have a very special guest joining us. Dr Ashley Ward, director of the heat policy innovation hub at Duke University's Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment and Sustainability. Thank you so much for being here today. Dr Ward, how are you doing?

Dr. Ashley Ward 6:02
I'm doing well. How are you and thank you for having me.

Emilia Rivadeneira 6:05
Yeah, I'm doing well. Thank you so much. Well, today, we'll be delving into a topic that's on everyone's minds right now, the blistering heat wave sweeping across the southeast regions, more specifically in the triangle area in North Carolina, besides it being summer, why is it so exceptionally hot outside right now?

Dr. Ashley Ward 6:27
Well, one of the things that has been happening this summer, and you may have heard the term, you know, heat dome, basically, and that occurs when in the upper atmosphere you have a pressure system that acts sort of like a lid on a pot, and so it holds all of the heat below it, right? And so it keeps it very stagnant. And so we've had a few of those move through already this heat season, one of the things about a heat dome, though, is just like a lid on the pot. The longer the lid is there, the hotter it gets underneath it, right? So, and some of those cases, which you may remember from last summer, where we had, in Arizona, for example, 30 days of over 110

degrees, which is really exceptional, right? So, I think you know, we certainly have had those kinds of phenomena happening through this heat season, but ultimately, what I think we're seeing is a resetting of a new normal. And you know, one of the things we talk about with climate change is how the temperature regime will change over time. We've talked about this with example for rainfall too, like changes in precipitation where we're not getting slow, steady rainfall. Rainfall is coming in really big, you know, downpours or deluge, right? And it's the same thing happening with temperature. So, you know, the last 12 months, each month has hit the record warmth for that month. So you know, May was the warmest may on record, April, the warmest April on record, and so on and so forth. So what we're really seeing here is a phenomena of our changing climate, and that means that our heat seasons are getting more intense, and they're also getting longer. So they're traditionally considered May through September, but now we're seeing starting like in April and maybe going through to October. So what we are feeling right now is really the result of climate change, right? And I actually wanted to mention that Raleigh reach a staggering all time record high, I think, on Saturday, of 106

Emilia Rivadeneira 8:49
degrees Fahrenheit, with a maximum heat index of 118 Fahrenheit. These temperatures are kind of rare for the triangle area, where we usually don't see highs touching triple digits frequently. You mentioned climate change, but what are some of the other factors that have contributed to this extreme and unusual heat wave hitting our area?

Dr. Ashley Ward 9:16
So some things that magnify what's already happening in the environment. So we're already experiencing increasing temperatures, baseline temperatures due to climate change, and then we have those phenomena, like those heat bombs that come through. But if you live in an urban area, you also are experiencing the impact of the urban heat island. And what that means is that the materials that we use in our urban environment, asphalt, cement, you know, different materials that we use in buildings and things like that, are heat trapping materials, and so as the solar radiation and the temperature warms up outside, those materials. Capture that temperature, increasing the temperature as you're close to the ground, right? So as humans are walking on asphalt and cement, the radiated heat coming is not just coming from the sky from the sun anymore, right? It's also radiating up from the ground and from all the surfaces around us. One thing that's really important to note about climate change and this, and this is important with the urban heat island effect is one of the most difficult and actually dangerous aspects of heat is persistently high overnight temperatures. Now you cited that really incredible temperature record, temperature of one six degrees at the RDU. And that's true. One of the things that we know from climate change is east of the Mississippi so certainly throughout the southeast and North Carolina, for sure, is that in the coming decades, we will see increasing numbers of nights where the overnight temperature remains above 75 degrees, and in some cases, 80 degrees and those circumstances this very dangerous, because the everything needs a moment to recover from heat, right? Our human bodies do, plants, animals, our energy grid and those systems, everything needs time that overnight. It turns out those hours overnight really are critical in helping you know, everything rebound from that extreme exposure during the day. If you live in an urban area, though, and the urban area has been absorbing the surfaces that heat all day long, it also contributes, though, to that overnight temperature. So when the sun goes down at night, all of that heat is released from those materials in the urban setting and keeps the environment in an urban setting warm. So there are lots of different factors that contribute to heat vulnerability. For those that live in urban areas, though, they are particularly vulnerable to the urban heat island. Now I want to point out that in North Carolina and in many places, rural communities have higher heat illness rates than urban communities, and there's a lot of factors that go into this, for example, energy poverty and inefficient housing and so if you can imagine those nights where it remains very warm overnight, and you live in a home in which you either don't have air conditioning, your air conditioning unit is old, maybe, and not as efficient, or you can't afford to run your air conditioner now you're in a home where You can't have access to cooling overnight to cool down, and so those overnight temperatures become really important in our body's ability to recover from what we were exposed to during the day,

Emilia Rivadeneira 12:51
right? And I've heard actually about the term heat island, and I know that Raleigh is consider one of those. But I wanted to ask you, what does this mean for us? What implications does this heat wave have for communities? I know that you touch on a little bit about that, but just in depth,

Dr. Ashley Ward 13:15
one of the things I hope is that people start to realize that heat impacts almost every aspect of our lives. Certainly, there are health implications for heat. So if you have an underlying health condition like diabetes or a respiratory condition or cardiovascular disease, you are more vulnerable to the impacts of extreme heat. But what most people don't know is, even if you take common medications like anxiety medications or anti depression medication hype medications for hypertension, these medications interrupt your body's ability to thermo regulate, so they actually make it harder for you to cool your body down when you've been exposed to heat. So then we have vulnerable groups such as those who are, you know, aged populations over 65 but pregnant women. And so I like to say everybody is vulnerable to heat. And I think it's a misperception that people think they're not. There are some people that are more vulnerable than others, and so certainly the human health aspect of heat, we know that there is growing connection between mental health, specifically schizophrenia, and heat. We also know that heat interacts poorly with opioid use and alcohol use, so that all of these things lead to more severe negative health outcomes. But heat also affects our lives in other ways. It is an economic burden on our communities, especially if you think about those who have to run their air conditioning constantly to cool off. And I was just talking about the issue of energy poverty, heat interrupts and. And decreases learning outcomes for children. So when we're talking about it getting hotter in May and at the beginning of June or September, when when children are back in school, you know most people do not realize that about 40% of the public schools in the US lack adequate HVAC, so they are not adequately cooled. And most people think, oh, that's got to be like in Vermont or somewhere where it doesn't matter. That's not true. We have schools in North Carolina who that are not air conditioned. We have prisons in North Carolina that are not air conditioned. We there is no cooling standard in the US, so nursing homes for our age populations, we have a state rule that says they can't get above 80 degrees. 80 degrees is actually quite hot for people who already have underlying health conditions, and then affordable housing and public housing, there is no cooling standard. So often those those living arrangements lack AC. So that leads to, you know, a lack of or a decrease in learning outcomes, the stress on populations and families, things like just trying to cool and maintain safe temperatures for your food in your home. I mean, I think people really do not think about the broader implications of heat. Those are all individual things, but systematically, we have the pool on our electric grid. How hard is it to provide that service to people? The impact of warming temperatures on our water systems, where we have an overgrowth of algae when the water gets too warm in our fresh water systems. And so if you like to go and have, you know, go to the lake and have different recreation. You know, harmful algal blooms are part of this process. Our livestock and our animals are impacted, which also decreases agricultural yields. I mean, I can go on and on right. The list goes on and on, the impact that this is the environment in which we live, and we have built our entire civilization around a certain temperature regime. Our bodies have adapted. Our ecosystems have adapted to this, and we're just not ready and able to adapt fast enough for how quickly the temperatures are changing,

Emilia Rivadeneira 17:15
right? And I really like what you mentioned that you know, like heat and well, now extreme heat affects everyone. Affects older generations. It affects us, students and in our daily lives and the environment that we interact in. And so I wanted to ask you about what are some recommendations that we can follow in order to prevent all of this, experiencing all of this risks?

Dr. Ashley Ward 17:50
I love that you asked me that question, because so many times people just ask about the problem and not what to do about it. And I think it's really important that people know that there are some really practical steps you can take to protect yourself. One of the most important things you can do is check on each other. You know, I think that's really important. We the number one factor in resilience writ large, whether it's from a hurricane, tornadoes, heat, or anything else, is social capital. The social relationships we have with other people is what actually makes us resilient. So check on each other. That's one thing. The other thing, though, is there's some very, very simple steps that an individual could take to protect themselves individually. If you go for a walk or a hike, or you play a game, a basketball game with friends, or you do anything where you're exposed to heat, and you come home, one of the first things you can do is take a cool shower for about 10 minutes. That doesn't cost anything really, right? And it really lowers your core body temperature. It's very effective at doing so you can also there are also other methods that have been that science has proven, research has proven that work at lowering our core body temperature. For example, if you immerse your feet over your ankles in cool water, this works great for people who are disabled or our age populations who can't really get in the shower. So if you take a bucket and put their feet in cool water over their ankles. It lowers your core body temperature. One of the things that the military uses, in the same vein is they don't want trainees taking off their boots, you know, in the middle of training exercises. So they do what's called Arm immersion. And so they have troughs where they immerse their arms from their hands all the way over their elbows in cool water. This is something that could easily be transferred to an occupational setting, like people who work in roofing or construction or road workers, or a number of other applications, where you know, every hour, you just drop your arms in the cool water a cooler. You could take a rectangular cooler and set it up as a cooling station and do this, very easy to do, but immersing your arms or your feet. Five to seven minutes, extremely effective. On the same vein, if you have a T shirt and you're outside, if you dip your T shirt in cool water and put it on your body and restore that every hour, it keeps your core body temperature low, these are all life saving things that you can do in the immediate a little bit more planning is in your home or apartment or wherever you live, strategic use of fans, making sure that during the day, when it's really hot, that you're keeping those windows and everything closed. I know that seems counterintuitive, but you want to keep the heat out as it cools down, open them, turn your fans on, take a cool rag and wipe your body off and stand in front of the fan. And then finally, for a lot of people who have window unit air conditioning units, if you're having to ration your cooling in your home for cost, prioritize cooling your bedroom, because this is where you're going to sleep. And we really need that recovery period. It very, very important for health outcomes. A lot of people think about cooling their den, their living space, but you're not actually in that living space that long. So if you cool your bedroom and keep your bedroom door shut, you can, you can really, you'll have a, basically a cooling center set up in your own home. And speaking of cooling centers, since you're in Raleigh, the Wake County government does establish cooling centers, and so there are formal cooling centers that you can go visit. But I would also encourage people to think about informal cooling centers, you know, places like Walmart or a shopping center where you can go and just walk around for an hour and cool down even the grocery store. And so you know, really walk slowly through the grocery store when you go right and give yourself time to get the benefit of that air conditioning. The public libraries are often used for cooling centers. One of the challenges is that they close, you know, at six or seven. So that's been a difficult, you know, thing for people to try and utilize. But I do know that the city of Raleigh and other other municipalities and governments across North Carolina, I know this because I've been working with many of their governments. They're actively looking for creative ways to establish cooling centers for communities to use.

Emilia Rivadeneira 22:27
Yeah, I've actually had done use of Dutch cooling centers. I usually just go walk in a grocery store because it's it's really hot during the summer, but talking more about the impacts associated with extreme heat in our environment, I actually found out this news story that said that as of July 4, 75% of the state is under a moderate drought, and the long term outlook is seen as optimistic, with predictions suggesting this could persist through September. So how much of a role does the heat wave we're currently experiencing play in exacerbating this drought conditions? What

Dr. Ashley Ward 23:19
a great question. So I usually say that heat is the least lonely event. You know? I say that meaning that it often exasperate, exacerbates other underlying conditions, like some of the ones I was already talking about earlier, but it also is an amplifier when it comes to other climate events. So what I mean by that is drought is a great example. The hotter the air temperature is, the more evaporation that takes place out of the soil, and that the rate of evaporation from plants and soil increases, which dries out the soil, which leads to drought. And so it also means that when we have rainfall, you know, it's evaporating quickly, and it doesn't have enough time to seep deep into our groundwater systems. So heat and drought are very intimately connected, of course. And I think one of the things that is also very concerning in these situations is especially as we lead to the fall, as you rightly noted that they're predicting that this could lead well into the fall, is whenever you have a lot of dried plant matter, you create fuel for forest fires. And I don't know if you remember from I believe it was 2016 17 area. We had a fairly large set of wildfires that took place in western North Carolina and through eastern Tennessee, Gatlinburg in that area, also Lake Lure area in North Carolina over these were devastating, enormous wildfires that were fueled by pro. On drought after periods of high heat, right? So we are creating the litter that is needed, basically for wildfire. So this is an example of how climate events start to cascade into multiple disasters. So it's an extreme heat event that increases the drought event, that increases the likelihood of a wildfire event. And so on that same note, though we are in North Carolina, it is very common in the summer to have a thunderstorm blow through, you know, in the afternoon, and quite severe sometimes. And so one of the things that commonly happens in those circumstances. We have power outages due to those now, if you live in an urban area, that restoration can be fairly rapid, you know, so you get your power turned back on relatively quickly, not always, but relatively quickly. Outside of urban areas, those power restoration rates are a lot, are a bit longer, so something that would have been just a nuisance event during the summer, a severe thunderstorm in the middle of heat season, where it knocks out people's air conditioner. You talk a nuisance event, and it becomes quite a dangerous event in certain circumstances, especially as we think about, you know, 24 hours, 48 hours without power. And so, you know, again, to my point, that he is the least lonely event. It often accompanies or coincides with other events to magnify the impact of those events as well. Yeah,

Emilia Rivadeneira 26:35
for sure. And I mean, it is kind of worrisome to hear the connection that the extreme heat has with droughts and potential consequences with wildfires and all and I wanted to ask you about what does this indicate about the broader trends in climate change affecting communities in the southeast, especially in the triangle area, Raleigh, Durham and North Carolina in general, as well.

Dr. Ashley Ward 27:09
Well, the last national climate assessment showed that the southeast is a region that will likely experience some of the largest impacts from climate change in the country as when it as measured by percent GDP, mortality and other factors. This is largely due to the combination of multiple different types of hazards that exist in this region of the southeast. At the same time, let's see. A few years ago, Johns Hopkins released a study that also showed that not only is the southeast one of the most are likely to experience some of the largest impacts from climate change, but they are also the region is the least ready to deal with those and so I think one of the things that I Know I want to take a moment to really praise Governor Cooper, in this sense, for heat, because he has done quite a few things that have made it a little bit easier for North Carolinians to address this topic. For one, establishing an office of recovery and resilience. We had the first Chief, Chief resilience officer, I think, in the nation, and there's still only about 13 states that have them. Amanda Martin is our current one, and so situating a resilience office with emergency management and the governor office has been really critical to helping North Carolinians recover both build mitigate the impacts of these events and build resilience to these events, but also, working with our partners at the Office of recovery and resilience, my shop here at Duke, along with the state climate office and the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, we have developed county level heat action plans for every county in the state. And so there is a heat action plan template that is available on the NCORE office of recovery and resilience website that will help community leaders walk through the process of how to identify who is vulnerable in their community to heat and how and develop The necessary structures to both plan adequately in advance, but then also respond in the moment of extreme heat. Events planning, heat action planning is really, really critical part of this for communities, because you said you have visited a cooling center before, but many people, when surveyed, have no idea that there's a cooling center available to them, or they don't have transportation to get there right or and so thinking through all of the different ways in which people can protect themselves is an important part of that planning process, and it also means that when local governments need to allocate resources to do things. Like open up shelters for our unhoused populations, for example, or housing unstable populations. This is something that has to be planned for. And you know, there needs to. It's not something that's easy to do at the last minute, right? So, you know, working through the planning process to help all of our community partners come together, whether you're an ag extension person that's going to talk to farmers about how to protect outdoor workers occupational health nurses that are working with manufacturers, people who supervise county workers that work on our roads and on our campuses and our in our public facilities, to those that serve like Meals on Wheels and food pantries and services for the unhoused drug addicted populations all of those. I mean, so it takes, it takes a community of people to address this, and in order to do that, it takes intentional planning. And so the state of North Carolina has done a really great job of trying to build the support that's necessary to help local governments do it. Now in other parts of the region of the southeast, Miami has a heat officer. Jane Gilbert is the heat officer. She's the first heat officer in the country, and the first woman. We only have three heat officers, Miami, Phoenix and LA right now, but, and then there's Arizona just appointed their very first statewide heat officer. I would love to see North Carolina do something like this. I strongly believe in a whole of state approach to this problem, because while urban heat island is an issue and and the populations that someone in, you know, the City of Raleigh or Durham would need to deal with is very different than the kind of services and planning and preparedness that need to happen, say in Caswell County or in some of our more rural counties, in Scotland County, Sampson County, the context is very different. The populations are different, their capacities are different, and so thinking about a statewide heat officer, I would just be thrilled to see North Carolina the first state in the southeast with a heat officer, a statewide heat officer, but outside of Miami's heat officer, and the work that's happening in North Carolina, you know, I'm sad to say, you know, states across the region that they want to, there's a desire to, and what they're looking for is guidance on what to do next. I think that we're reaching a point where heat is becoming such a big issue, hot topic, so to speak, that legislators and leaders, both at US congressional level, at the state level and at the local level, are now leaning in, saying, Okay, we've got to do something about this. And coming together and figuring out what that looks like is something that each state has to work on.

Emilia Rivadeneira 32:59
Yeah, for sure, kind of touching on the work that you have done, and the work that the heat policy innovation hub has done, because from what I've read, you know, it has been at the forefront of tackling extreme heat in North Carolina and providing resources to people. Could you give us an overview of what the hub does and what are the projects that you're currently working on? Sure.

Dr. Ashley Ward 33:33
So the reason we the hub launched about one year ago, June, 21 2023, so we're still kind of new, but the concept is not new. About 10 years ago, I was working with NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and I was working in Carolina communities, and they asked our team to go out and work with communities in eastern North Carolina on climate extremes. Now remember, this was not a period where climate change was very different. Back then, 10 years ago, people talked about it very differently. And so at first I was really intimidated, actually, to go and and I was worried, but I did think we're going to talk about hurricanes. I mean, other than hurricanes, I mean and basketball. What else do we talk about North Carolina? So barbecue, we talk about that so, you know. But when we got there, into the community. The community members themselves, they said, Actually, we know about hurricanes, but do you know about heat? Because we're really worried about this issue about heat was getting hotter. And so I think to me, that was a moment where me and everybody that I worked with at the time, we were like, oh, so we started really diving into this topic of extreme heat, but it goes to show you that communities have long understood that heat is an issue for their community and something that they needed to do something to address, right? So they just been waiting for the rest of us to catch up. So this is something that communities have recognized a long time ago. Now, researchers, over the last 10 years, they've actually done a really good job too. Two both, you know, Unc, NC, State Central, I mean, A and T, you name them. All of the ones in North Carolina, including Duke, have done some really great work at trying to understand exactly how heat impacts the body at what thresholds. You know, how can we quantify the impact of heat? Really great research on this topic. However, none of that was making its way into the policy and decision making space, as I've been working for the last six years at Duke. You know what? The insights that communities have about this problem, the lessons that science can give us about this problem, none of those things seem to be part of the conversation whenever I was talking with policy and decision makers. So I propose the heat policy innovation hub to do exactly that right to be the bridge between community science and policy. And so one of our big goals is to foster sort of cross sector collaboration on the topic of heat. And we just finished and wrapped up a big event called Heat wise as part of a longer, bigger program that we have a policy partnership program, if you will, where we had 100 leaders from throughout the country come here to Duke for two and a half days and really deep dive on some topics around heat. We had folks from the finance and insurance sector, from industry, from communities, from NGOs, from science, everybody to really, to really start thinking critically and deeply about some of the hardest challenges when it comes to tackling extreme heat. So a lot of what we do is foster this kind of collaborative work that comes up with sort of policy frameworks and guidelines. We work a lot with other governments to think about heat governance. So the heat action planning that we're doing, we're doing some work with the UN agencies right now, helping the UN agencies develop a governance framework. We work with other states in the country as well, not just North Carolina and through regional organizations too. So we've done a lot of work trying to help people build out what does good heat governance look like. We also partner with researchers. There may be somebody over in the school of medicine or nursing, for example, or even engineering here on campus who are like, Hey, we're doing this project on kidney stones, and we think that heat is an important driver of kidney stone development. And you know, how can we incorporate heat into this project? So we do research projects with folks at Duke, but in other institutions, helping them incorporate heat into their research questions, so that we can better understand how heat affects other health outcomes. And then I think you know, one of the things that that we're really committed to at the heat hub is leaning in on this challenge with rural heat vulnerability in rural communities throughout North Carolina, the heat related illness rates are seven to 10 times they what they are in urban areas, and they're the solutions that we have, like cool pavement and cool roofs and tree planting and and you know, things that are meant to mitigate the impact of the urban heat island aren't as easily transferable to a rural setting. Cooling centers are not going to work in a rural setting where you have to drive 30 miles to get to one. So we've really been thinking deeply about rural resilience at the heat hub and figuring out how we can help prepare rural communities, but also build the capacity in rural communities to deal with this issue.

Emilia Rivadeneira 38:38
That actually sounds amazing, like, amazing work, and looking ahead to the fall and to, you know, the rest of the year, talking more about the solutions, rather than, you know, like the issue itself. What can we expect to see from the hub to do regarding, you know, extreme heat, as you mentioned, especially now that we have actually started to realize about the extreme heat, now that during the summer, it has hit, you know, the highest temperatures in history, I think, in the triangle area. So so

Dr. Ashley Ward 39:19
from our heat wise event, we're developing a report that will be published toward the end of the year that sort of captures the key findings. But also from that group, we're putting together some work groups of people to take a, you know, even deeper dive into some of these issues, and particularly thinking about what kind of recommendations we can make, for example, to those that hold and manage grant dollars, and how we can get those funds from, you know, we had the IRA and the IJA and huge amounts of money coming out of the federal government to help communities build resilience to climate change. And very small amount of that money has been has been directed toward heat mitigation efforts and adaptation resilience for heat. And so one of the things we're working on this fall is thinking about, how can we open up right that pathway to make sure that the communities that need the funds to do the projects that they would like to do. You know, what are? What are things that can happen that can make access to those funds easier for community partners? We've also got some a fairly I'm very excited about a project we were recently funded to do, and we're going to be working on that this year. And this sounds like a wonky project, but I promise it's a really cool project. Energy poverty is a big deal for people, so we are working with a set of partners from both from the energy sector and the insurance sector and communities up and down the I 95 corridor, looking at the role that insurance can play and helping reduce the impact of energy poverty. So for example, is there an insurance product that would make it so that people don't have to worry about their air conditioning getting shut off so they could run their air conditioning during heat months, that would insure them against this risk? Right? So we're doing some work with the private sector on things like that. And of course, we also have some of our some of our other research projects that we will continue working on with our colleagues throughout the university and other universities too, in addition to refining some of the the governance policies, like making sure that we understand at which thresholds, which temperature thresholds do we need to? Do we need to use to enact our warning systems right now, most of our although the Raleigh Weather Service office is wonderful, they do a great job at issuing warnings and alerts for extreme heat. But that's not uniform across the National Weather Service. So one of the things that we're trying to do is think a lot about at which threshold people need to act, and that means which threshold do we see people go to the emergency department, right? So like we want to make sure that the watches and warnings that are issued are issued before we hit those temperatures so that people know to take caution, and maybe it will keep them out of the ER, right, for

Emilia Rivadeneira 42:28
sure. And, yeah, I think what you're working on, it's exceptional. I think we I'm personally excited to see the work that the Innovation Hub is doing and will continue to view in the future. But is there anything else you would like to add?

Dr. Ashley Ward 42:45
I think I would just emphasize to anybody listening what I said earlier, which is, everybody is vulnerable to heat, and the heat that you're experiencing right now is not the same as the heat that you experienced 10 years ago, it's more it's it's higher in temperature, it's longer in duration, it's more humid, it doesn't get cooler at night. And all of these things mean that even if 10 years ago, you used to go jogging, you know, every evening, every day, at four o'clock, and you were fine, it doesn't mean that that's going to be okay for right now, and so the misperception around of risk, around heat is one of the, to me, the biggest challenges that we face, and why it's so great that programs like this one and others are talking about this topic, so that people start to be away. Young people die from heat stroke every year. You can be 25 and in great shape and still have a heat stroke. And so my biggest takeaway is to never take for granted that you don't think that you fall into a risk group, right? Everybody is a risk group. If you're exposed to heat you're at risk free for Yeah,

Emilia Rivadeneira 44:01
no, yeah, for sure, and especially now during the summer with these high temperatures that we're seeing. But yeah, anyway, so this has been a very insightful interview. Thank you so much, Dr Ward, for joining us today.

Dr. Ashley Ward 44:16
Thank you for having me,

Emilia Rivadeneira 44:17
and on that note, thank you for tuning in to wknc. Eye on the triangle, your source of local news interviews and more. For those eager to dive deeper into the projects and valuable resources offered by the heat policy innovation hub, visit nicholasinstitute.duke.edu. As well. You can listen back to this episode or past episodes on wknc.org/podcasts, music for this episode is titled krakatua by Noah Stark, licensed under creative commons. Thank you once again. Dr, word for accompanying us today, and don't forget to stay hydrated throughout the summer. You.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai