The HEARTH Project (Health and Environment Adaptation Research in Temperatures and Heat)

ANNOUNCEMENTHEARTH study update

The HEARTH team has completed data collection in Kilifi County, Kenya, and analysis is now underway. Over 18 months, the team worked with pregnant and postpartum women living in four different housing types, placing temperature sensors on women’s wrists, inside homes and in health facilities, alongside outdoor and meteorological measurements. Measuring heat across these multiple levels, rather than relying on weather-station data alone, is one of the study’s distinctive contributions and was particularly challenging to implement in a rural, low-resource setting.
The analysis will examine how heat exposure during pregnancy and after birth relates to maternal and newborn health, newborn care practices, breastfeeding, health-facility attendance and birth outcomes. The team is also modelling indoor, outdoor and health-facility temperatures alongside meteorological data to identify the housing and environmental conditions associated with higher or lower heat-related risk.
Our aim is to identify the household and health-facility conditions that place mothers and newborns at greatest risk from heat and to inform practical actions that families, health facilities and county planners can take to reduce that risk.
We are grateful to the women and families in Kilifi who participated in the study, to our field team, and to the Kilifi County Department of Health.

ABOUT HEARTH

HEARTH is a three-year research project funded by the Medical Research Foundation (MRF). It aims to understand the effects of personal heat exposure on maternal and neonatal health in rural Kilifi, Kenya and to generate evidence to inform protective interventions against the adverse health impacts of heat. The project is a collaboration between Africa International University, Kenya, and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), UK.

RATIONALE

Exposure to high ambient temperatures during pregnancy and labour has been shown to affect maternal and newborn health negatively, but research in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) remains limited. Globally, very little is known about the impacts of high temperatures during the postpartum period. The lack of data on how heat affects postpartum health and behaviors, such as breastfeeding and maternal care, leaves a critical gap in understanding the full scope of these risks. Current studies have mainly focused on outdoor temperatures, neglecting the often higher indoor temperatures in low-resource settings. Additionally, anecdotal evidence suggests an increase in preterm births, low birth weight, and emergency C-sections during heatwaves, but formal studies are lacking. The lack of detailed data and modeling on indoor temperature exposure hinders the development of effective interventions to protect maternal and neonatal health.