Heat Safety Week raises awareness about extreme heat and safety and encourages action, says Shweta Arya, senior project manager for smart surfaces at APHA’s Center for Climate, Health and Equity. 

When parents leave the hospital with a newborn, their minds are already full of questions about things that might harm their baby’s health. This summer, we ask families to add two more critical questions to that important checklist: Do you have access to air conditioning, and can you afford to keep it running on hot days?

As we face another summer of record-breaking temperatures, heat has become a genuine safety issue. 

Extreme heat now kills more people in the U.S. than any other weather-related hazard. For infants, the evidence is stark: Babies born during heat waves face a significantly higher risk of mortality. These aren't outliers; they are the reality for a meaningful share of the families we serve who struggle to pay energy bills or lack cooling in their home. 

The risks extend well beyond infancy. Heat-related illnesses or death can happen to older people, teens and young adults, outdoor workers, people with chronic health conditions, and athletes of any age practicing or playing a sport. We are beginning to approach conditions that challenge human biology at a cellular level. This is not alarmism. It is physiology. 

Recognizing that this physiological reality demands institutional action, public health professionals and medical doctors increasingly understand that extreme heat is not a seasonal inconvenience but a growing public health threat that worsens health inequities. 

To meet this moment, APHA, the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health and other national organizations convened the Alliance for Heat Resilience and Health. Our first action was to mobilize health professionals in response to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's rulemaking on heat illness prevention for workers. Today, the alliance leverages its expertise and network to advance health-based policies on extreme heat, generate proactive emergency plans and spur increased local engagement. 

May 18-22 is Heat Safety Week, hosted by the National Integrated Heat Health Information System. The event is intended to raise awareness about heat and safety and bring about action. Participants are encouraged to share information, resources and infographics on social media throughout the week. Each day offers a different heat-related theme. 

To support the week, the alliance launched the 2026 Heat Safety Awareness Toolkit. The toolkit offers ways communities, organizations and advocates can take action during the weeklong social media event.

Movement is already happening before the week begins. In Maryland, the Maryland Public Health Association, in collaboration with Healthy Climate Maryland and the Green and Healthy Homes Initiative, successfully secured a proclamation from the governor, a key strategy the toolkit recommends for raising the profile of heat as a health crisis. By securing official recognition from mayors and governors, we make the invisible threat of heat visible to the public and policymakers alike. 

Additional community-based solutions are already being tested and shared across the country. One example is the heat ambassador model, which trains neighbors to reach out to those at highest risk from extreme heat and share practical information and support. 

Another is community heat mapping, such as the heat watch model, which engages residents in collecting local data to identify hotspots and guide more targeted action. 

These efforts show how community engagement can make heat protections more visible, trusted and effective, while also sparking ideas that other communities can adapt to meet local needs. 

Parents leaving the hospital this summer with a newborn deserve more than a checklist. They deserve a community that has decided, collectively, that no child should be endangered by a heat wave because their family can't afford to run air conditioning. That is what we are working toward — not just awareness, but the systemic protections and civic infrastructure that make survival less a matter of luck or income. The heat is serious. So is our obligation to meet it.

Lisa Patel, MD, MESc, FAAP, executive director at the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health, contributed to this article.

Photo by Mitsuhiro Matsumoto, courtesy iStockphoto