ABS 087: The Cultural Context of Heat: Addressing Heat in the United States

Sophia Koss ¹ ²

¹ Vanderbilt University
² Vanderbilt Cultural Context of Health and Wellbeing Initiative

Van Wickle (2025) Volume 1, ABS 087

Abstract: Extreme heat is a pressing public health issue within the United States, as 2024 has now been confirmed as the hottest year on record. This report, as a part of a larger Vanderbilt Cultural Context of Health and Wellbeing project, aims to address heat as not just an environmental hazard maintaining unequal physiological impacts. Rather, we hope to address heat as something shaped by culture, infrastructure, and inequity. While the physiological risks of heat are well researched, including our normal thermoregulatory mechanisms such as radiation, conduction, convection, and evaporation, its broader social and structural dimensions are often overlooked.

Heat does not affect everyone equally. Heat disproportionally heightens risk of people at both ends of the age spectrum, like older adults whose heat regulation diminishes, and infants who possess immature thermoregulatory systems. Individuals with health conditions such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, or psychiatric disorders are also impacted. Additionally, some medications interfere with the body’s ability to successfully cool down, compounding the effects. Finally, pregnancy can increase physical vulnerability.

Understanding the body’s physiologic response to heat is essential. However, individual-level solutions, like drinking water and relying on air conditioning, are not enough. We need broader, systemic approaches requiring a view of heat through an interdisciplinary lens, drawing from frameworks within environmental justice, public health, anthropology, and social policy. Ultimately, this report aims to frame heat as part of a larger syndemic, where environmental stress, chronic health conditions, and social inequities converge. This requires action through urban planning, labor rights, healthcare, and climate responses. As temperatures only continue to rise, so too must our understandings of heat. We must recognize this as not just a climate-driven issue, but a deeply human one. Only through this broader perspective can we design just and resilient responses to one of the defining challenges of our time.

Methods: Not published.

Conclusions: Not published.

Discussion: Not published.