Heat illness presentations to emergency departments in Western Sydney: surveillance for environmental, personal and behavioural risk factors.

Objective: To pilot surveillance to describe environmental, personal and behavioural risk factors for people presenting to hospital emergency departments (EDs) with heat illness.

Methods: We conducted a retrospective case series and telephone interview study of people presenting to EDs across South Western Sydney, Western Sydney and Nepean Blue Mountains Local Health Districts with heat illness over the 2017/18 and 2018/19 summer periods (1 December to 28 February). We used the Public Health Rapid Emergency Disease Syndromic Surveillance (PHREDSS) 'heat problems' syndrome to identify people with heat illness and medical records to find contact details.