NoWoHit Joint project of the "German Adaptation Strategy to Climate Change" (DAS): "Surveillance of emergency contacts during hot spells in Worms".
- Project management:
Prof. Dr. Dea Niebuhr, Prof. Dr. Katharina Rathmann, Prof. Dr. Henny Annette Grewe (until 03/2023) - Research assistants:
Hendrik Siebert (M.Sc. Public Health), Debora Janson (M.A. Political Science; until 03/2023) - Project partners:
City of Worms, Klinikum Worms (contractor) - Funding:
Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU) based on a resolution of the German Bundestag within the framework of the BMU programme "Adaptation to Climate Change" with the focus on "Municipal Lighthouse Projects". - Funding code: 67DAS209A
- Duration: September 2020 to February 2023 (extended until October 2023)
Aims and questions
The aim of the NoWoHit project is to develop and implement a procedure for surveillance of the heat-related burden of disease in the city of Worms based on the evaluation of heat-related emergency contacts of the regional hospital provider, which is suitable for assessing measures of a municipal heat action plan. In the NoWoHit project, the monitoring of the case load in the central emergency room of the hospital in Worms is the subject, as it can be assumed that the data will provide indicators for an evaluation of the results of the municipal heat action plan in the city of Worms, which is to be drawn up in parallel. Further information can be found here.
Monitoring the burden of disease during hot spells is in line with the recommendations of WHO Europe for "Heat Health Action Plans" in 2008 and the "Recommendations for action for the preparation of heat action plans to protect human health" of the Federal-Länder Ad Hoc Working Group "Health Adaptation to the Consequences of Climate Change" (GAK) in 2017. Fulda University of Applied Sciences has been commissioned to examine the suitability of routine emergency care data for monitoring heat-related disease burden and to develop an evaluation procedure that is suitable for the continuous monitoring of case numbers, the planning of measures as well as for their evaluation within the framework of a heat action plan. The procedure should ultimately serve to determine the need for action and to prove the effectiveness of measures within the framework of heat action plans of medium-sized and larger municipalities in Germany - here using the example of the city of Worms.
In seven work packages it will be determined
a) how health burdens of the population due to heat are reflected in the emergency contact data of the local hospital provider,
b) how these data can be processed for surveillance of the heat-related burden of disease, and
c) how a timely distribution to relevant actors can take place.
The project is led by the University of Applied Sciences Fulda, with the City of Worms and the Klinikum Worms as cooperation partners. In the first phase of the project, the hospital provides the Fulda University of Applied Sciences with the emergency data, which has been processed in accordance with data protection regulations, for analysis. In the second project phase, the city of Worms receives the data from the hospital and uses it to evaluate its heat action plan with the help of the analysis tools developed by Fulda University of Applied Sciences.