Assessing mortality associated with heatwaves in the cool climate region of Tasmania, Australia

Background: Anthropogenic climate change is causing a rise in global temperatures, with this trend projected to increase into the future. Heatwaves are associated with a rise in preventable deaths, however this association is less well understood in regions experiencing cooler climates. Methods: We used a space-time-stratified conditional Poisson (-quasi) regression analysis to assess if heatwaves were associated with all-cause mortality in Tasmania, Australia, for the period 2010 -2018. Results: We found that across Tasmania, lowintensity heatwaves were relatively common, with less occurrence of severe and extreme heatwaves. We found that for all heatwave types combined, there was a rise in mortality of 8 % (RR=1.08, 95 %CI 1.01 -1.16). For low-intensity heatwaves, we found mortality increased by 9 % (RR=1.09, 95 %CI 1.02 -1.17). Conclusion: These results have health promotion and health protection policy and practice implications for Tasmanian healthcare services, and potentially other cooler climate regions around the world. (c) 2024 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Masson SAS. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NCND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)