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Climate and Health: Summer Health Hazards Dashboard

Adult with two children enjoying boating

The summer health hazards dashboard shows near real-time data from emergency department (ED) visits for heat illnesses, boating injuries, drownings, and respiratory illnesses from air pollution in Wisconsin from May through October.

Monitoring data on seasonal injuries and illnesses allow health care and public health experts to identify trends early and and work with partners to prevent them.

Access dashboard user instructions and share your feedback and suggestions in our short survey so we can improve the dashboard.

Data for summer health hazards

Data in the dashboard are live from May through October and updated weekly during that timeframe. To access near real-time locations of boating deaths, see the Boat Fatal Incidents Reports on Department of Natural Resources' website.

Data view options

  • For heat-related illnesses, you can view either the number of ED visits with the associated summer hazards or the percentage of all visits reported that include a heat-related condition of interest.
  • For the air quality-related respiratory illnesses, drownings, and recreational boating injuries, you can only view the percentage of all ED visits.

Numbers of visits

  • Numbers of visits show the trend in the condition and provide an estimate of the degree of the condition's burden at Wisconsin EDs. However, because not all Wisconsin EDs report to the Electronic Surveillance System for the Early Notification of Community-Based Epidemics (ESSENCE), these numbers could be an underestimate. ESSENCE is a system that uses electronic health data from ED visits to monitor disease outbreaks and other public health impacts, enabling timely detection of and response to public health threats.
  • Because the number of EDs reporting to ESSENCE has increased over time, the number of visits may increase over time or due to changes in how EDs report data.
  • Because reporting of chief complaints and discharge diagnoses can vary from facility to facility, these numbers could either underestimate or overestimate the conditions of interest, depending on the facility.
  • Though it doesn't happen often, automatic transmission of data from health care facilities can stop, change, or be delayed. These scenarios result in underestimates of the number of visits for the health conditions of interest.
  • Numbers of visits represent the suspected number of visits with a particular health condition or event.
  • These numbers are considered preliminary and are subject to change.

Percentages of visits

  • Percentages of visits provide a more consistent measure of a trend in the health condition that is less impacted by unexpected changes in reporting from facilities.
  • Percentages of visits smooth out fluctuations in visits that result from different patterns of health care seeking based on the day of the week.
  • Data is preliminary and are subject to change.

Dashboard data information

Select the headers to learn more about the dashboard data, definitions, sources and usage.

The near real-time data monitoring system uses patient electronic health records to identify and investigate trends in emerging public health threats. The health records include a primary reason for the patient's visit and a discharge diagnosis code assigned by the hospital that describes the cause of the injury or illness. This code helps public health professionals collect and track the data to understand how and how often the injury or illness happens.

The dashboard data is considered preliminary and subject to change because of how the ED visit data is collected and reported. As a result, this data is most useful for tracking trends and do not represent an exact count of all the visits.

Visits with heat-related illnesses were identified by searching the visit chief complaints, reasons for admission, and discharge diagnoses for words like “heat,” “sun stroke,” and “hyperthermia,” or ICD-10 codes, such as T67 and X30.

The Heat-Related Illness v2 query definition in the National Syndromic Surveillance Program's (NSSP) ESSENCE was used.

Visits for respiratory illnesses that can be associated with poor air quality were identified by searching the visit chief complaints and discharge diagnoses for words like “acute bronchitis,” "emphysema," and "asthma," or ICD-10 codes, such as J20 or J80.

The Air Quality-Related Respiratory Illness v1 query definition in NSSP ESSENCE was used.

Visits with unintentional drowning were identified by searching the visit chief complaints and discharge diagnoses for words like “drown,” or ICD-10 codes, such as T751.

The CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) Unintentional Drowning v1 query definition in NSSP ESSENCE was used.

Visits for recreational boating injury were identified by searching the visit chief complaints and discharge diagnoses for words like “kayak” and “jet ski,” or ICD-10 codes, such as V90, V91, V92, V93, V94, and W16.7.

The Recreational Boating Incidents v1 query definition in NSSP ESSENCE was used.

The data source used in these charts are near-real time ED visit data reported to the NSSP ESSENCE tool. The data is used to monitor trends in ED visits for certain health conditions in near real-time.

About 94% of EDs in Wisconsin report visit data to ESSENCE. The data is reported automatically from the facility electronic health records and include ED visits for Wisconsin and non-Wisconsin residents. The data include the visit chief complaint (according to a patient's report of the reason for their visit) and discharge diagnoses. These data are dynamic, subject to change, and considered preliminary.

Heat

Air quality and asthma

Boating safety

Drowning prevention

For more information, email DHSClimate@dhs.wisconsin.gov or call us at 608-266-1120.

Glossary

 
Last revised June 4, 2025