Release Date:  8/7/2006

Contact(s):   Seth Feinberg, (360) 650-3864 Seth.Feinberg@wwu.edu

BELLINGHAM – The August issue of the American Sociological Review will include research by Western Washington University Assistant Professor Seth Feinberg, about mortality rates among the elderly during a major heat wave.

Feinberg authored “Neighborhood Social Processes, Physical Conditions, and Disaster-Related Mortality: The Case of the 1995 Heat Wave” with Associate Professor Christopher Browning of Ohio State University, and University of Chicago Assistant Professor Kathleen Cagney and doctoral student Danielle Wallace.

The researchers found that elderly people are more likely to die during a heat wave when they live in neighborhoods with few businesses to draw them out of their homes. During the 1995 heat wave in Chicago, mortality rates were higher than average in neighborhoods with run-down businesses that were dominated by liquor stores and bars.

Other studies have shown elderly people in low-income neighborhoods were more at risk of dying in a heat wave, but this research shows why they are more vulnerable in some disadvantaged areas, said Browning, the lead author of the study.

“The neighborhoods with the highest mortality rates were less likely to have stores or other businesses where older people felt comfortable going to, even in the worst heat,” Browning said. “They stayed bunkered in their apartments where they were most at risk for heat-related illnesses that led to death.”

Nearly 800 people in Chicago, mostly elderly folks living alone, died during one week in the midst of a July 1995 heat wave. During several days that week, the temperature was over 100, with a heat index on July 13 of 126.

The research was supported by grants from the National Institute on Aging and the National Institutes of Health’s Office of Behavioral and Social Science Research.

Feinberg received his Ph.D. from the Ohio State University in 2003, and was an assistant professor at Montana State University before coming to Western in 2005. In sociology classes, he teaches deviance, criminology and corrections, as well as research methodology.

The Web site for the American Sociological Review is www.asanet.org.

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