Study to Assess the Effectiveness of a Heat Risk Reduction Decision Support Platform and the Barriers and Facilitators of Its Implementation With 30 US Local Health Department Sites

Summary

The goal of this clinical trial is to learn if an innovative online decision support tool (Chart) that provides localized health risk assessment for extreme heat at the census tract level helps local health departments plan and prepare for extreme heat by identifying risk drivers in their jurisdictions, highlighting interventions that are effective for their jurisdiction's risk profile, and providing information regarding intervention implementation. This trial will evaluate barriers and facilitators of the tool's implementation. The main questions it aims to answer are:

1. Does a health department using the tool have better reach, effectiveness, adoption, implementation, and maintenance of heat-health activities compared with an information-only control?
2. What are the barriers and facilitators of Chart's implementation?

Researchers will compare health departments using Chart to health departments using provided heat-health information only.

Conditions

• Extreme Heat
• Heat Health
• Extreme Heat Waves
• Heat
• Emergency Preparedness
• Disaster Management
• Disaster Planning
• Disasters

Interventions

OTHER

Online decision support platform to support evidence-based heat health risk assessment and extreme heat event preparedness planning

The intervention group will receive facilitated engagement with Chart. Chart is an online decision support platform designed to support evidence-based risk assessment and planning for extreme heat risk mitigation. Chart has a risk assessment platform that provides estimates of heat-health risks at a census tract level under various hazard conditions. It also has a decision support platform that links drivers of risk in a given location with information about potential risk reduction activities and includes information useful to policymakers regarding intervention efficacy, timing, and cost. Facilitated engagement includes an initial introduction to the platform, real-time questions and answers, and focused discussion regarding priority interventions and planning and implementation needs. This engagement comprises about five hours of time that can be provided over the course of a couple weeks or several months, depending on the needs of the health department.

OTHER

Heat and health risk assessment and preparedness information

Study participants in the control group will be provided with a package of information supportive of heat-health vulnerability and risk assessment and planning for risk reduction activities through built environment hazard mitigation and public health programming. This package will include an annotated list of online resources, including those available on Heat.gov and the CDC website, and a selected set of review papers on heat-health vulnerability, heat-health risk assessment, heat hazard mitigation through built environment strategies, and heat action planning and preparedness.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS)

  collaborator NIH

• University of Washington

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Jeremy Hess, MD, MPH · University of Washington

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

OTHER

Masking

NONE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2025-12-01

Primary Completion

2026-12-31

Completion

2027-08-31

Countries

• United States

Study Locations