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Flooding greatly endangers public health and is an urgent concern as rapid population growth in flood-prone regions and more extreme weather events will increase the number of people at risk. However, an exhaustive analysis of mortality following floods has not been conducted. The authors use 35.6 million complete death records over 18 years (2001–2018), highly resolved flood exposure data and a Bayesian conditional quasi-Poisson model to estimate the association of flooding with monthly county-level death rates for cancers, cardiovascular diseases, infectious and parasitic diseases, injuries, neuropsychiatric conditions and respiratory diseases up to 3 months after the flood. 

The findings show that during the month of flooding, very severe heavy rain-related floods were associated with increased infectious disease and cardiovascular disease death rates and tropical cyclone-related floods were associated with increased injury death rates. During the month of very severe tropical cyclone-related flooding, increases in injury death rate were higher for those ≥65 years old than for those aged <65 years and for females than for males. Effective public health responses are critical now and with projected increased food severity driven by climate change.