JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

As climate change intensifies the frequency of extreme weather events, its health implications for individual rural residents in sub-Saharan Africa are still insufficiently studied. Wearable devices, which provide real-time health monitoring in diverse settings, offer potential in enhancing our understanding of the health impacts of climate variations.

Objective:

To evaluate the feasibility and effectiveness of consumer-grade wearable devices in quantifying the health effects of weather exposures on the physiological responses of rural populations in Western Kenya, thus identifying health impacts linked to weather exposures.

Methods:

We conducted an observational case study in Western Kenya, employing wearable devices over a three-week period to monitor real-time health metrics, including step count, sleep, heart rate, and body shell temperature. A local weather station provided data on rainfall and heat.

Results:

Our cohort comprised 83 participants, with 42 being women and an average age of 33 years. Physical activity showed a positive correlation between physical activity and maximal wet bulb globe temperature (WBGT) (EST: 0·06; SE: 0·02; p=0·008), while minimum nighttime temperatures and heat index did correlate negatively with sleep duration. A high thermal load was observed, with cautionary heat index levels hit on 194 of 204 days (95·1%). Despite device failures (21·3%), data was largely complete for sleep and step count (82·6% and 86·1%, respectively), however incomplete for heart rate (7·0%).

Conclusions:

The study demonstrates the applicability of wearables for measuring health metrics and reveals significant climate-health correlations in rural Kenya, highlighting health impacts due to climate change. Given the elevated environmental exposure, these findings emphasize the urgent need for adaptive measures and climate change and health research funding, particularly in vulnerable regions such as Africa.