Study shows extreme heat keeps older adults closer to home
A Stanford Medicine app found that older adults' daily travel range shrank as temperatures rose, potentially limiting social, physical and community activities.
A new app developed by Stanford Medicine researchers has revealed that older adults tend to limit their daily movements outside the home when temperatures rise above 84°F. The findings, published in the journal Innovation in Aging, suggest that extreme heat could have significant impacts on the health and well-being of older Americans.
Life-space mobility, a measure of how far people travel daily outside their homes, is strongly linked to overall health in older adults. The study followed 82 adults with an average age of 74.5 over two weeks in various seasons. As the daily average temperature reached 84°F, the participants' home range shrank by nearly two-thirds of a square mile for every degree above the threshold.
The researchers caution that the findings should not encourage older adults to engage in strenuous activities during extreme heat, but rather emphasize the need for policymakers and city planners to address the issue by improving public infrastructure, such as air-conditioned community centers, especially in lower-income areas where residents are less likely to have access to cooling facilities.
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