This recent article from Laurie Parsons for The Conversation, explores “How inequality shapes your experience of a heatwave” supported by research evidence published in the Lancet that “the UK saw only 800 excess deaths associated with heat compared with over 60,500 associated with cold between 2000 and 2019. But there were 3,271 excess deaths due to heat in the three months from June to August 2022 alone, with most occurring in care homes.”
This article explores the social factors that make some people more vulnerable than others, drawing out the unequal distribution of vulnerability and risk. Concluding that heat stress is a matter of inequality, and that heat deaths are avoidable, with targeted policy driven action across every level.