Medical Experts Warn: Extreme Heat Is a Public Health Emergency in Chicago

Doctors in Chicago are warning that extreme heat is not just uncomfortable — it is a serious public health emergency. Emergency rooms across the city are already treating patients with heat-related illnesses, and the hottest part of summer has barely started. Medical experts say that without action from city leaders and residents, many people — especially the elderly, the unhoused, and those without air conditioning — could be seriously hurt or even killed.

Extreme heat is the deadliest weather-related hazard in the United States. It kills more Americans in most years than hurricanes, floods, and tornadoes combined. Over the past two decades, heat-related deaths have gone up by 117 percent, which means they have more than doubled.

When a person gets heatstroke, their body loses its ability to cool itself down. If a person's body temperature goes above 104 degrees, the brain and organs can be seriously damaged. This can lead to seizures, organ failure, and death — sometimes within just a few hours. Early warning signs like confusion and tiredness are often mistaken for simple exhaustion, which makes heatstroke especially dangerous.

Chicago has resources to help people stay safe in the heat, but most residents are not using them. These resources are called cooling centers — public places where anyone can go to cool off for free. In 2024, fewer than 3 out of every 100 Chicagoans used one, even though only about 30 percent of single-family homes in Chicago have central air conditioning, compared to 76 percent across the rest of the country.

Not every neighborhood in Chicago faces the same level of danger. South and West Side neighborhoods like Englewood, Austin, and North Lawndale tend to be hotter than other parts of the city because they have fewer trees and more pavement, which soaks up heat from the sun. During recent heat advisories, neighborhoods like Chatham, Little Village, Roseland, and Humboldt Park had the most heat-related emergency calls in the city.

The city's cooling center system also has serious gaps. Many centers close in the early evening, even when temperatures stay dangerously high well into the night. As of this week, only one 24-hour cooling center exists in all of Chicago — the Garfield Center at 10 S. Kedzie — for a city of nearly 3 million people.

The doctors writing about this issue point to Chicago's deadly 1995 heat wave as a warning from history. More than 700 people died during that event, most of them from low-income communities. Poverty, poor housing, and lack of access to cooling turned a heat wave into a disaster, and experts say the same thing could happen again.

Medical experts are calling on Chicago's leaders to keep cooling centers open longer, make sure they are easy to find, and list accurate locations online. They also want the centers to be reachable by public transit and spread fairly across all neighborhoods. Residents can also help by checking on elderly or vulnerable neighbors and calling 311 or using the CHI311 app to request a wellness check for anyone who may be in danger.