MCOHS Seminar Series
10:00AM - 11:00AM
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a complex lung disease affecting 16 million Americans. People with COPD are susceptible to environmental perturbations including heat and cold waves that can exacerbate disease symptoms. Individual-level data with geocoded residential addresses were collected from the Veterans Health Administration on 377,545 deceased patients with COPD (2016 to 2021 ). A case-crossover study was designed to estimate heat and cold wave-associated mortality risks using conditional logistic regression examining lagged effects up to 7 days. Effect modification by age, gender, race and ethnicity was also explored. Heatwaves had the strongest effect on all-cause mortality at lag day O with attenuated effects by lag day 1. The effect of cold waves steadily increased from lag day 2 and plateaued at lag day 4 with declining but still elevated effects over the remaining 7-day lag period. Differences in risk were also detected upon stratification by gender and race. This study demonstrated harmful associations between heat and cold waves among a high-risk population of Veterans with COPD. Future research should emphasize using individual-level data to better estimate the associations between extreme weather events and health outcomes for high-risk populations with chronic medical conditions.
After this presentation, learners will be able to:
- Estimate the risk of mortality associated with heat and cold wave exposure among a cohort of individuals all of whom were diagnosed with a chronic respiratory disease.
- Determine if there are differences in heat and cold wave-related mortality risk by age, gender, race, and ethnicity among this vulnerable population.
