This is a part of the monthly webinar series hosted by the Midwest Center for Occupational Health and Safety.

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a complex lung disease affecting 16 million Americans. People with COPD are susceptible to environmental perturbations including heat and cold waves that can exacerbate disease symptoms. Individual-level data with geocoded residential addresses were collected from the Veterans Health Administration on 377,545 deceased patients with COPD (2016 to 2021). A case-crossover study was designed to estimate heat and cold wave associated mortality risks using conditional logistic regression examining lagged effects up to 7 days. This study demonstrated harmful associations between heat and cold waves among a high-risk population of Veterans with COPD. Future research should emphasize using individual-level data to better estimate the associations between extreme weather events and health outcomes for high-risk populations with chronic medical conditions.

After this presentation, learners will be able to:

• Estimate the risk of mortality associated with heat and cold wave exposure among a cohort of individuals all of whom were diagnosed with a chronic respiratory disease.

• Determine if there are differences in heat and cold wave-related mortality risk by age, gender, race, and ethnicity among this vulnerable population.