HEP 452 Module 2 Module 2 Assignment: Opinion Editorial with SMOG Readability Assessment Example

The Heat Is Killing Our Neighbors Indoors. Maricopa County Can Stop It.

Student Name

BS in Health Education and Health Promotion, Arizona State University

HEP 452: Health Advocacy in Health Education

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

The Heat Is Killing Our Neighbors Indoors. Maricopa County Can Stop It.

Opinion Editorial

Every summer we count the people who die of heat in Maricopa County, and every summer the same pattern returns. We picture heat deaths outdoors, on a trail or a sidewalk. But more than a third of the county's heat deaths from 2006 to 2016 happened indoors, and most of those indoor victims were 65 or older (Iverson et al., 2020).

Most of the people who died indoors were not new to the desert. Across all heat deaths in those years, six in ten of the people whose history was known had lived in Arizona for 20 years or more (Iverson et al., 2020). Knowing the heat did not save them. What failed was the equipment, the money or the company that would have kept them cool.

These are our grandparents and neighbors. Many live alone. Some have an air conditioner that broke in June and a repair bill they cannot pay. Others turn the unit off because they fear the electric bill. In county survey estimates, about one adult in three reports feeling lonely, and one in sixteen has been threatened with a utility shut-off in the past year (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2025).

We know what keeps people alive. After Chicago's 1995 heat wave, researchers matched each person who died with a neighbor of similar age who lived. Having a working air conditioner was tied to odds of death roughly 70% lower, and living alone to odds more than twice as high (Semenza et al., 1996). A later review of six such studies found the same: working home cooling, trips to cool places and regular contact with other people all protected life (Bouchama et al., 2007).

That points to three steps the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors can take before next summer.

First, fund a cooling repair program. Older and low-income residents should be able to call one number in May and have a broken unit fixed or replaced within days, not weeks. Federal energy aid can help pay for cooling, and county funds can fill the gap.

Second, start a summer check-in program. Volunteers and aging-services staff can call or visit older adults who live alone on every extreme heat day. A two-minute call can catch a broken unit, a missed medication or a person who needs a ride.

Third, keep cooling sites open into the evening and offer rides to them. Many homes stay dangerously hot after sunset, when most daytime sites have closed.

Some will say that keeping cool is a private matter, and that families should look after their own. Many do. But an older widow whose children live in another state, or a man on a fixed income who is already choosing between rent and medicine, cannot fix a compressor alone. Our summers are also getting longer and hotter, and the number of residents over 65 keeps growing. A problem that grows every year needs a plan that does not depend on luck.

None of this is new technology. It is the ordinary work of a community that looks after its own. Fixing an air conditioner costs far less than an ambulance ride, a hospital stay or a funeral.

The supervisors will set next year's budget soon. If you have an older parent, a neighbor who lives alone, or plans to grow old in this valley yourself, tell them that no one in Maricopa County should die of heat in their own living room.

SMOG Readability Assessment

I scored the op-ed with the SMOG formula, which estimates the grade level a reader needs by counting long words, those of three syllables or more, across a 30-sentence sample (McLaughlin, 1969). I took ten sentences from the beginning, middle and end, counted polysyllabic words in them, and applied the formula: grade = 1.0430 × √(polysyllables × 30 ÷ sentences) + 3.1291.

The first draft used words such as "surveillance," "hyperthermia" and "intergovernmental," which pushed it to a twelfth-grade level. I replaced technical terms with everyday words, split long sentences and moved statistics into short, separate sentences. The final version scores just under a tenth-grade level, which suits a newspaper audience, although health materials for the general public are often aimed lower.

References

Bouchama, A., Dehbi, M., Mohamed, G., Matthies, F., Shoukri, M., & Menne, B. (2007). Prognostic factors in heat wave related deaths: A meta-analysis. Archives of Internal Medicine, 167(20), 2170-2176. https://doi.org/10.1001/archinte.167.20.ira70009

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2025). PLACES: Local data for better health, county data, 2025 release [Data set]. https://data.cdc.gov/500-Cities-Places/PLACES-Local-Data-for-Better-Health-County-Data-20/swc5-untb

Iverson, S. A., Gettel, A., Bezold, C. P., Goodin, K., McKinney, B., Sunenshine, R., & Berisha, V. (2020). Heat-associated mortality in a hot climate: Maricopa County, Arizona, 2006-2016. Public Health Reports, 135(5), 631-639. https://doi.org/10.1177/0033354920938006

McLaughlin, G. H. (1969). SMOG grading: A new readability formula. Journal of Reading, 12(8), 639-646.

Semenza, J. C., Rubin, C. H., Falter, K. H., Selanikio, J. D., Flanders, W. D., Howe, H. L., & Wilhelm, J. L. (1996). Heat-related deaths during the July 1995 heat wave in Chicago. New England Journal of Medicine, 335(2), 84-90. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJM199607113350203