Study to Assess the Effectiveness of a Heat Risk Reduction Decision Support Platform and the Barriers and Facilitators of Its Implementation With 30 US Local Health Department Sites

Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial To Assess the Effectiveness of a Heat Risk Reduction Decision Support Platform and Barriers and Facilitators of Its Implementation

The goal of this clinical trial is to learn if an innovative online decision support tool (Chart) that provides localized health risk assessment for extreme heat at the census tract level helps local health departments plan and prepare for extreme heat by identifying risk drivers in their jurisdictions, highlighting interventions that are effective for their jurisdiction's risk profile, and providing information regarding intervention implementation. This trial will evaluate barriers and facilitators of the tool's implementation. The main questions it aims to answer are:

1. Does a health department using the tool have better reach, effectiveness, adoption, implementation, and maintenance of heat-health activities compared with an information-only control?
2. What are the barriers and facilitators of Chart's implementation?

Researchers will compare health departments using Chart to health departments using provided heat-health information only.

Inclusion Criteria:

• Local (city or county) health department
• Local (i.e., city or county) health department with at least partial autonomy to pursue the development and implementation of heat-health activities (i.e., not a state where all public health activities are administered at a state level)
• Availability of a staff member to participate in all elements of the trial. Local health department staff responsible for planning and implementing programming to protect constituents from extreme heat.
• Adults whose demographics and health status will mirror those of the general population.
• Current employees of included health departments aged 18 or greater

Exclusion Criteria:

• Being in a state where public health activities are exclusively managed at a state level and not having staff availability to participate
• Children and prisoners