In a country where extreme heat claims lives with growing frequency, the United States has never developed a reliable way to count those deaths — leaving policymakers, researchers, and communities navigating a crisis they cannot fully see. An Arizona medical examiner, working at the geographic heart of America's heat emergency, has begun to change that by creating a standardized protocol for documenting and attributing heat-related mortality. It is quiet, procedural work, but it carries the weight of a foundational truth: a society cannot protect lives it has not learned to count.
Arizona Medical Examiner Pioneers Heat-Death Tracking as U.S. Lacks Unified Protocol
Heat-related deaths are occurring but specific casualty figures are not provided in the source material.