Health Equity

In Their Own Words

Why Federal LIHEAP Benefits Should Expand To Pay For Cooling

Extreme Heat Will Hit People With Chronic Illnesses The Hardest. They Will Need Cooling Along With Their Medicines

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The following excerpt is from an op-ed that first appeared in PennLive on August 14th, 2024.

We’re all sweaty. Last year was the hottest on record, and more heat waves are coming. 

This will hurt the most vulnerable among us first. People with chronic conditions like diabetes, high blood pressure, depression are already more sensitive to heat. On top of that, their prescription drugs can impair sweating, making them even more susceptible to hot weather.  

As someone who has spent his career studying drug safety in vulnerable patients, I can foresee the day when doctors may ask people with diabetes to stop using some drugs for a few days to get through a vicious hot spell. 

There are obvious problems with that. We need better tools.  

One solution is to revamp the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which helps people pay their heating bills. Yes. You read that right. LIHEAP is mostly for heat. But nearly 30 states allow the program to pay for cooling. Pennsylvania and more than 20 other states need to follow suit.   

LIHEAP’s archaic rules also need to be streamlined and simplified. The program is currently a frustrating bubble of bureaucracy that keeps many people from participating. … 

Congress should fund LIHEAP’s expansion via taxes levied on U.S. corporations proportionate to their greenhouse gas emissions. That’s reasonable because 100 corporations (not people!) are responsible for the lion’s share of global greenhouse gas emissions. 

The feds should require all states to cover cooling, so they can subsidize energy costs, and provide for new cooling units as well as repairs to existing ones. 

Furthermore, funds should be earmarked to persons with chronic health conditions like diabetes because they are most affected by extreme heat  

I am hardly the first person to come up with the idea to expand LIHEAP.  Community Legal Services of Philadelphia and the Hispanic-focused nonprofit Esperanza are among the groups pushing for a LIHEAP update. Making the program year round would make it easier to administer, they argue in a 2023 report.  Bills have also been introduced in the House and Senate to expand the program to cover cooling.

These folks need cooling just as they need their medicines. 

Read the entire op-ed here.

Author

Charles Leonard

Charles Leonard, PharmD, MSCE

Associate Professor, Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Informatics, Perelman School of Medicine

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