Impact of Extreme Temperatures on Emergency Hospital Admissions by Age and Socio-Economic Deprivation in England

Abstract

Climate change poses an unprecedented challenge to population health and health systems' resilience. While earlier studies have estimated morbidity attributable to hot or cold weather across cities, we provide the first large-scale, population-wide assessment of extreme temperatures on inequalities in excess emergency hospital admissions in England. We used a panel dataset of emergency hospital admissions across hospitals between 2001-2012 in England combined with meteorological data to exploit daily variation in temperature experienced by hospitals and a 30-day lag period. We used a distributed lag model with multiple fixed-effects controlling for seasonal factors, to examine interaction effects across diseases with age and indicators of deprivation. We assessed hospital impacts across age groups and levels of deprivation for six disease categories identified as being the most weather-sensitive. Our results showed an increase in emergency hospital admissions with extreme temperatures that were more prominent among older and socially-deprived populations. We estimated larger hospitalisation impacts associated with extreme cold temperatures than with extreme hot temperatures, net of secular trends and local variation.