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In recent years, Europe has experienced record-breaking temperatures and repeated, prolonged heatwaves, leading to significant impacts on health. To help keep people safe during heatwaves, some European countries have developed heat-health action plan (HHAPs), which outline roles and responsibilities during periods of heat and heatwaves as well as short and long-term adaptive measures. Heat-health surveillance systems are also a critical component of a coordinated response as they provide data and evidence to support decision-making before, during, and after periods of heat.

In 2024, the EEA published a briefing titled The Impacts of Heat on Health: Surveillance and Preparedness in Europe under the European Climate and Health Observatory initiative. The briefing presents the status of HHAPs and surveillance in Europe and is based on the findings from a survey conducted by IANPHI with National Public Health Institutes (NPHIs) (details of the survey methodology can be found in the Technical Report). Across Europe, 21 of the EEA-38 countries have HHAP in place, and another four NPHIs are developing HHAPs. Likewise, 20 of the EEA-38 countries currently have surveillance systems in place and three additional countries are developing heat-health surveillance systems.

The thematic maps below provide an overview of existing HHAP and surveillance systems in Europe based on the information presented in the briefing The Impacts of Heat on Health: Surveillance and Preparedness in Europe. Note that the thematic maps below integrate data from the 2024 survey with NPHIs with data from the WHO 2019 survey on HHAPs and a review of heat-health warning systems in Europe conducted by Cassanueva et al. (2019).

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This translation is generated by eTranslation, a machine translation tool provided by the European Commission.