Maricopa County officials cite decline in heat deaths after ARPA-funded cooling effort but warn funding gaps remain

Maricopa County public health and human services officials told the Board of Supervisors on a recent morning that coordinated, ARPA-funded heat-response efforts in 2024 coincided with a drop in heat-related deaths but that many programs face funding cliffs ahead of the 2025 season.

Janine Fowler, director for Maricopa County Public Health, said county agencies worked with cities, the Maricopa Association of Governments and nonprofits last year after ARPA money became available. "Heat toll in Maricopa County takes several hundred lives every year," Fowler said, and county departments used ARPA dollars to expand cooling access and partner services.

The county framed the 2024 work as operationalizing years of surveillance and planning. Fowler said the county’s standardized heat-related death surveillance system — built in partnership with the Office of the Medical Examiner in 2006 — provided the data that guided contracting and site placement.

Jason Matthews, interim director of the Human Services Department, described three core programs tied to the county’s response: an emergency HVAC repair-and-replacement program, utility-assistance support, and targeted assistance to special populations (including the "Hand in Hand" homelessness-prevention outreach and senior in-home case management). Matthews said the HVAC program served about 345 single-family households last fiscal year (311 of those were HVAC-specific) and a total of about 791 clients through related services. He said the county spent about $4,900,000 on the HVAC…