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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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Abstract

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.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the following agencies and individuals for their valuable assistance with the project: State of New York’s Local Health Departments and Regional Environmental Health Offices; NY State and County Offices of Emergency Management; NYS Association of County Health Officials; NYS DOH Office of Health Emergency Preparedness; and NYS DOH Outreach and Education Group. Work on this project was supported in part by grants from the National Environmental Public Health Tracking Program, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Environmental Health, New York State Department of Health, Empire State Plaza, Corning Tower Room 1203, Albany, NY, 12237, USA

    Seema G. Nayak, Nathan Graber, Claudine Jones Rafferty & Syni-An Hwang

  2. Department of Environmental Health Sciences, School of Public Health, University at Albany, SUNY, 1 University Place, Rensselaer, NY, 12144, USA

    Shao Lin & Yi Lu

  3. Department of Geography, Kent State University, McGilvrey Hall 443, Kent, OH, 44242, USA

    Scott C. Sheridan

  4. Office of Health Emergency Preparedness, New York State Department of Health, 800 North Pearl St (Suite 322), Menands, NY, 12204, USA

    Michael Primeau

Authors
  1. Seema G. Nayak
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  2. Shao Lin
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  3. Scott C. Sheridan
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  4. Yi Lu
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  5. Nathan Graber
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  6. Michael Primeau
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  7. Claudine Jones Rafferty
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  8. Syni-An Hwang
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Correspondence to Seema G. Nayak.

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Nayak, S.G., Lin, S., Sheridan, S. et al. Surveying Local Health Departments and County Emergency Management Offices on Cooling Centers as a Heat Adaptation Resource in New York State. J Community Health 42, 43–50 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10900-016-0224-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10900-016-0224-4

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