Heat + Health + Human Rights: Building Awareness for Change
About Rapid Anthropology
At Rapid Anthropology, we explore the complex, evolving relationship between extreme heat, public health, and human rights.
Our mission is to inform, educate, and build awareness for change particularly in those areas that have been overlooked, neglected,
or are only now coming into focus. We do this through evidence-based research, cross-sector collaboration, radical listening, and strategic advocacy.
Extreme Heat
Heat is no longer about discomfort or inconvenience; with climate change heat has become a matter of life and death. Extreme heat kills more people each year than all other weather events combined. When temperatures increase, Emergency Room visits spike, hospital admissions surge, incidents of violence escalate, food systems are crushed, and transportation systems collapse. Extreme heat is a public health crisis.
One Health
One Health is a holistic and systemic approach to environmental health that recognizes the critical connection between people, animals, plants, and ecosystems; what affects one, affects all. This is a radical departure from conventional approaches to climate health which are siloed and disconnected from the way the real world works. One Health successfully breaks down borders and boundaries for sustainable change.
Heat Equity
Extreme heat affects all of us, but it does not do so equally. People of color, those who are poor, the elderly, women, children, and other vulnerable and marginalized groups, including the incarcerated, the unhoused, and outdoor workers, are disproportionately impacted by heat. Extreme heat is an equity and justice issue; with climate change it has become a humanitarian crisis.
Hot Topics – Extreme Heat: A Crisis of Humanity
As the phenomena of last summer’s record-breaking temperatures were captivating and consuming public attention, the heat was insidiously transitioning from a public health crisis into a full-blown humanitarian crisis. Heat is now the staging grounds for the violation of basic human rights, and the most vulnerable and marginalized groups are the collateral. From construction workers to the incarcerated, the unhomed to migrants along the U.S.-Mexico Border, extreme heat has become a crisis of Humanity.
