Projecting the Climate-sensitive Disease Burden in Illinois

Several health conditions are expected to become more frequent and/or more severe as the climate of Illinois becomes warmer and  precipitation increases.  Among these health outcomes are heat stress illness (such as heat exhaustion, heat syncope, and heat stroke), asthma, certain vector-borne diseases, and conditions attributable to heavy precipitation including waterborne gastrointestinal infections.   The BRACE-Illinois program has used hospital discharge and mortality data to characterize the current burden of heat stress illness in our State.   Exposure-response functions that describe the relationship between metrics of ambient heat and heat stress illness will be used to model the future burden of heat stress illness for a range of temperature scenarios.   The BRACE-Illinois program has used the US Environmental Protection Agency’s BENMap tool to model the future burden of acute asthma exacerbations attributable to increases in tropospheric ozone as the climate warms.    Identifying the current burden of waterborne disease attributable to heavy precipitation has been a challenge, and at this point we are not  able to estimate the future burden of such conditions. Challenges, strengths, and limitations of the disease burden estimation process, as well as next steps will be described.