by Heather McBrien, Daniel Mork, Vivian Do, Marianthi-Anna Kioumourtzoglou, Joan A. Casey Background In the United States, already-prevalent power outages are increasing in frequency and duration with climate change.
Studies from New York State show that power outages may increase hospitalizations for cardiovascular disease (CVD) and respiratory disease in vulnerable populations such as older adults, but exposure data limitations have constrained nationwide studies of power outages and health. Here, we tested if power outages were associated with emergency CVD and respiratory disease-related hospitalizations among older adults in the United States.
Methods and findings We developed a national dataset of power outage exposure and identified county-days with ≥1% of customers exposed to 8+ hour power outages in 2018. We leveraged data on 23 million Medicare Fee-For-Service beneficiaries aged 65+ to estimate daily county-level rates of emergency CVD- and respiratory-related hospitalizations.
We applied a case-crossover design with a conditional Poisson model to estimate the lagged association (up to 1 week) between daily county-level power outage exposure and cause-specific hospitalization rates. Models controlled for daily temperature, precipitation, and wind speed.
PLOS Medicine published a clinical update in Research Highlights on 12 Mar 2026.
The item focuses on The association between power outages and cardiovascular and respiratory hospitalizations among US Medicare beneficiaries in 2018: A case-crossover study.
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