As our climate becomes increasingly unstable due to global warming, extreme weather events are becoming both more frequent and severe, and this is likely to continue. Correspondingly, deaths in the UK due to extreme weather such as heat are increasing. Extreme weather also has a significant impact on wider health service use and the economy, such as damaging hospital equipment and storage of medicine, and generating greater use of emergency care.
The Adverse Weather and Health Plan (AWHP) aims to protect individuals and communities from the health effects of adverse weather and to build community resilience, reduce mortality, morbidity and healthcare use during extreme weather episodes.
The AWHP is targeted at a variety of organisations that protect health at all levels, including national bodies and government departments, regional health protection teams, Integrated Care Systems, Local Resilience Fora (LRFs), local authorities, NHS trusts, social care providers, and voluntary organisations. The AWHP sets out the different organisations’ roles in building resilience to adverse weather and protecting health, which are related to organisational planning, guidance and the alerting system, among other things.
The overall aims of this project are to:
The overall research question that this evaluation seeks to answer as requested by UKHSA is:
Are the Adverse Weather and Health Plan actions being implemented within local health and social care organisations as recommended?
We are conducting an interview study with key stakeholders at a regional and local level (England specific), and we will explore knowledge of the AWHP, implementation to date, barriers and facilitators to implementation, the guidance supplied by UKHSA to date, and future support needed for successful implementation.
We are also conducting a short knowledge survey, focusing on local NHS and social care organisations, to understand the extent of previous knowledge of the AWHP and what steps have been taken to implement the AWHP.
The evaluation will pay close attention to inequities across organisations, particularly in terms of the resources available for implementation across health and care services in socioeconomically deprived areas.