In the chancel of Goodson Chapel, illuminated by late-afternoon sun, Ashley Ward moderated a panel discussion with three faith leaders from across the country. The discussion was part of “Cooling Communities,” a long-term project helping communities build resilience to extreme heat.
Ward, director of the Heat Policy Innovation Hub at the Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment & Sustainability, didn’t press the importance of the climate crisis or rattle off scientific results – the climate emergency was why everyone was in the chapel. And though we now talk about “climate change” instead of “global warming,” the focus of the panel was heat, which brings more than just discomfort.
In 2023, for example, hurricanes killed 19 people in the United States. Heat killed about 11,000. Over the last three decades heat has killed more people than any other weather phenomenon. The Hub brings scientists, governments and communities together to address the problems that come with heat, to try to turn science into policy to address the crisis.
“We move,” she said to the crowd in the chapel, “at the speed of trust.”
Heat has an awareness problem. Just as people readily support environmental issues affecting elephants or pandas but ignore more-widespread problems, people focus on climate issues like hurricanes and wildfires but take their eyes off the less-photogenic problem of heat. Ward learned this before she came to Duke, when she worked for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Working with people in the Carolina coastal plain about climate resilience, she says, “I really did think that they wanted to talk about hurricanes,” because hurricanes powerfully affect the Carolinas. “But the communities were like, yeah, we know about hurricanes. But what we don’t know about is heat. Do you know anything about heat? What can we do about this heat?”
Good question. In 2022 Duke announced its climate commitment, and the Nicholas Institute, which Ward had joined in 2019, put the word out: Got big ideas? Let’s hear ’em. Ward spoke up.
She wanted to create a center to gather the insights that communities have on heat, connect that knowledge with research, “and make sure that it has an entry point into the conversation with decision-makers and policymakers.” Enter the Hub, the first center in the nation focused on cross-disciplinary innovation on extreme heat policy and practice.
“We built our bridges,” she said, “our roadways, everything, for a climate that, in some ways, doesn’t exist anymore.” Asphalt, for example, has different recipes for different climate zones. Zones further north now have asphalt designed for cooler temperatures, leading to softening and other problems. And there is the New York City rotating bridge that in 2024 couldn’t close because its steel expanded in the unwonted heat.
“Heat affects so much of our lives,” Ward says. “Think about supply chain interruption and the cost that it means to our living expenses, not to mention the impact to our economy.” And consider agriculture. People think first of worker health, for good reason: According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, heat causes almost 3,400 annual work-related injuries and illnesses requiring time away from work. But it’s not just people: “Cows have a limit threshold in which they can live comfortably,” Ward says, and many die heat-related deaths each year. This affects farmers, food prices, worker health and energy use. It’s all connected.
That’s where the Hub comes in, working with policymakers to consider ways to build housing that keeps people cool without adding more stress to the grid, working with scientists to develop policies that improve health and other outcomes and working with local groups to learn about community response to heat. For example, when in recent years the Environmental Protection Agency and other government entities started creating heat policies, many contained cooling centers, but it turns out people don’t use them; nobody wants to come home from work and drag their family and pets to a library or public building. On the other hand, Ward notes, people may be creating ad hoc cooling centers by going to malls or big-box stores. Policymaking should include that local understanding of what works.
“How do we look at what states are already doing and make sure they are incorporating heat?” Ward asks. “And how do we make sure that when we do that, it’s based on the best science, and it’s based on what we hear from communities?”
Not just local communities. For example Nishad Jayasundara, Juli Plant Grainger Assistant Professor of Global Environmental Health, studies kidney disease suffered by agricultural workers in Sri Lanka. Another study is developing a cohort of subjects in rural North Carolina. “We are trying to understand the role of heat in all that,” he says, “because the disease is emerging in warming places around the world.” He returns to his research communities, he says, “and people say, ‘We keep giving you our biological samples and we now know that heat and pesticides are a problem. But can you tell us, what should we do differently?’”
He discusses that with the Hub. “That’s the framework that [Ward is] thinking about. How heat policies can be developed, but also how they need to be considered in micro scales. A heat policy that is relevant to a farmer in North Carolina is not going to be relevant to a farmer in Kenya or Sri Lanka.”
Ward also notes the work of David Carlson Ph.D.’15, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, who studies urban heat effects. He considers planting trees or using reflective paint on roofs. The trees create shade, and the painted roofs reflect sunlight back into space. “What is that going to do to the city?” he asks. “But also, what is the return on investment from how much it helps people’s health, and also what is our energy expenditure associated with this?
“There are additional effects that are known but not super well understood,” he goes on. “Infrastructure goes through more heating-cooling cycles and tends to decay faster. So there’s a lot of these knock-on effects, and by starting to try to estimate what all of these effects are in a data-driven manner, we’re hopeful that we can actually use this to help guide policy.” Ward takes studies like his and thinks of how to apply them, with help from communities themselves. “She can build connections to people that really care about these results,” Carlson says. “And use them to help inform people.”