Developing a Healthy Environment Assessment Tool (HEAT) to Address Heat-Health Vulnerability in South African Towns in a Warming World.

Prolonged exposure to high temperatures can cause heat-related illnesses and accelerate death, especially in the elderly. We developed a locally-appropriate Healthy Environment Assessment Tool, or 'HEAT' tool, to assess heat-health risks among communities. HEAT was co-developed with stakeholders and practitioners/professionals from the Rustenburg Local Municipality (RLM), a setting in which heat was identified as a risk in an earlier study.