NYC Officials: ‘Structural Racism’ Increases Risk of Heat Stress for Black New Yorkers

Officials at New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene reportedly sent out a warning to colleagues this week ahead of a heat wave hitting the Big Apple Thursday and Friday, warning that “structural racism” and its implications increase the risk of heat stress for black New Yorkers.

The August 4 alert, addressed to colleagues and distributed to clinical staff in primary care, family medicine, geriatrics, internal medicine, psychiatry, pharmacy, and emergency medicine, detailed the heat advisory, which warned of temperatures reaching over 100 on Thursday and the upper 90s on Friday.

Identifying extreme heat as the “deadliest type of extreme weather,” the letter specifically warned that “structural racism and the resulting social and economic inequities increase the risk of heat stress for Black New Yorkers.”