Intensive and residential elderly care services responding to heat wave – case Finland

ABSTRACT

Global warming increases the prevalence of extreme weather events such as heat waves, and the consequences are worst for vulnerable people. The impacts of 2014 and 2018 heat waves on institutional and residential care were studied, as the elderly people in these care services are most at risk. We conducted a survey to all privately produced intensive and residential elderly care services in 2014 and two regionally targeted surveys to both public and private intensive and residential elderly care service providers in 2018 and 2019. Descriptive statistics were used to analyse the data. Our findings show that there are major deficiencies in risk mitigation, preparedness and response to heat waves in Finland. No major improvement in mitigation is found between 2014 and 2018 even though the service units try to do their best in acute crisis to alleviate impacts of heat. Consequently, we recommend that services targeted to vulnerable population groups should be regarded as critical infrastructure and safeguarded like other critical societal functions. Strong public sector leadership and public-private cooperation in the regional and local level in mitigating risk, preparing to, responding, and recovering from extreme weather events are needed.

KEYWORDS:

• Elderly care
• residential care
• heat wave
• risk mitigation
• preparedness

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to the Regional State Administrative Agency for Western and Inland Finland and especially Head of Unit, Social and Health Care Services, Niina Siirilä and Senior Medical Officer of Regional Administration Dr Seppo Miilunpalo, who have supported us in the analysis of the monitoring data in this comparative study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).