How do heat waves impact health in your Southern California neighborhood?

By Brooke Staggs

When the mercury spikes, as it’s expected to across Southern California this weekend, a growing body of data shows that so do hospitalizations and deaths.

More attention is being paid to that link as climate change leads to more frequent and extreme heat waves. California created an “extreme heat” action plan this spring, for example, while Los Angeles recently became the third city in the country to hire a chief heat officer.

But a new online tool from UCLA – which lets the public search for related data by ZIP code – shows health risks from excessive heat don’t play out equally from city to city, with people living in some Southern California communities much more likely to end up hospitalized during a heat wave than their neighbors one ZIP code away.