Paper short abstract:

This paper aims to combine anthropological and epidemiological analysis, and discusses their complementarity. It is based on an ongoing transdisciplinary research project on older adults’ experiences of heat and heat stress, and its influence on their health and wellbeing, in an urban context.

Paper long abstract:

Anthropological engagements with statistical models often take critical approaches, demonstrating how they specifically represent the social world, while simultaneously reproducing existing inequalities and vulnerabilities. In this paper, we do not position epidemiological models in contrast with anthropological findings, but rather reflect on how these distinctive approaches might complement each other, and why they need each other.

This paper stems from an ongoing research project (EmCliC) which uses qualitative and quantitative methods to study older adults’ experiences of urban heat in Warsaw and Madrid. As anthropologists we investigate individuals’ experiences of heat, embedded in their social relationships and surroundings, and how heat stress affects their physical and mental wellbeing. Through epidemiological methods, we examine statistical associations between heat stress and health outcomes, i.e., mortality and morbidity, for an entire population. Anthropology thus works to understand the particular cultural and social context and dynamics of heat stress at an individual scale, while epidemiology offers a static, though general perspective of measurable outcomes at a city-wide scale. Particular aspects of how heat stress impacts people’s health and wellbeing are visible through participant observation, while hidden from statistical analysis, and vice versa. Looking at the same problem from those two different perspectives enables us to bridge an existing gap, and reveal what cannot be understood from one single perspective: a more comprehensive and holistic picture of the effects of heat stress on older adults’ health and wellbeing.