Data from local officials show that ER visits for heat illness are more frequent among certain populations.<\/p>\n
Heat exposure can vary significantly\u00a0according to where you live and work and how much time you spend outdoors. A factor known as the \u201curban heat island effect\u201d raises the temperatures of areas<\/a>\u00a0where vegetation has been replaced with materials like pavement.<\/p>\n Different demographics are also treated for heat exhaustion at varying rates.<\/p>\n \u201cThe extremes of age tend to be a little bit more vulnerable \u2014 the very young and the very old,\u201d said Dr. Robert Flannery, a sports medicine specialist who has worked on heat safety for years.<\/p>\n Houstonians over 65 years old may remember when they could handle the area\u2019s hot weather no problem. But people\u2019s resistance to heat can dwindle as they age.<\/p>\n No chart data available.<\/p>\n Daniel Overman, a paramedic with the Pearland Fire Department, said he most often transports active elderly residents who still work on their own yards and homes.<\/p>\n \u201cThey’ll have been outside for multiple hours and not taking in much water. They’re just doing what they’ve always done, for all their life,\u201d Overman said.<\/p>\n Cooling them off in time can stave off life-threatening heat stroke, which is \u201c100% always preventable,\u201d according to Houston Methodist emergency physician Dr. Anh Nguyen.<\/p>\n About the data<\/p>\n The Houston Chronicle is sourcing heat-illness emergency department visit data from the Houston Health Department ESSENCE, which tracks emergency visits by collecting visit information from hospitals. Data is shown for visits to hospitals located in Harris, Fort Bend and Montgomery counties.<\/p>\n New data is updated every Wednesday. HHD notes that daily visit counts are preliminary and may be updated retroactively.<\/p>\n Rates by ZIP code and demographic group are calculated using emergency visit counts for the current year and population data from the 2024 American Community Survey. The \u201cOther\u201d race designation applies to people whose race is listed as \u201cOther\u201d or \u201c2 or more races.\u201d One case involving a patient with gender listed as \u201cOther\u201d was dropped from the demographic analysis because this category was not available in the Census data.<\/p>\n This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> By subscribing, you agree to our Terms of Use<\/a> and acknowledge that your information will be used as described in our Privacy Notice<\/a>.<\/p>\n CreditsReporting by Rebekah F. Ward\/Houston Chronicle. Data reporting by Katherine Oung\/Houston Chronicle. Graphics, design and development by Katherine Oung\/Houston Chronicle and Andrew Williams\/Hearst DevHub. Production by Brady Stone\/Houston Chronicle. Editing by Caroline Ghisolfi\/Houston Chronicle, John Tedesco\/Houston Chronicle and Yaffa Fredrick\/Houston Chronicle. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Parts of downtown and northeast Houston are seeing much higher rates of heat emergency visits than elsewhere in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":414072,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[56,58,57],"class_list":["post-414071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=414071"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414071\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/414072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=414071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=414071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=414071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"logo\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/hc-square-black.png\"\/)
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