Anger Versus Fear: Perceptions of Terrorism Among the American Public

With recent terrorist attacks in Brussels, Belgium; Paris, France; San Bernardino, California and elsewhere, the rhetoric for addressing the issue of terrorism has grown more polarized. In particular we have seen increasingly aggressive statements demanding limits to immigration, increasing vigilance against Muslim communities, and calling for more direct military action against terrorist organizations.The tone of these statements has prompted an important question as to the underlying reason for the desire for more aggressive policing and military tactics. It has also raised critical questions regarding surveillance and data privacy rights via encryption backdoors on every day technologies. Is this desire for action driven more by a sense of fear and anxiety? Or is this driven by anger and humiliation?The answer to these questions may help understand which groups of individuals are likely to support or reject various approaches to combatting terrorism, as well as their perceptions of the kind of leadership needed

Do Shared Barriers When Reporting to Work During an Influenza Pandemic Influence Hospital Workers’ Willingness to Work? A Multilevel Framework

Objective Characteristics associated with interventions and barriers that influence health care workers’ willingness to report for duty during an influenza pandemic were identified. Additionally, this study examined whether workers who live in proximal geographic regions shared the same barriers and would respond to the same interventions. Methods Hospital employees (n=2965) recorded changes in willingness to work during an influenza pandemic on the basis of interventions aimed at mitigating barriers. Distance from work, hospital type, job role, and family composition were examined by clustering the effects of barriers from reporting for duty and region of residence. Results Across all workers, providing protection for the family was the greatest motivator for willingness to work during a pandemic. Respondents who expressed the same barriers and lived nearby shared common responses in their willingness to work. Younger employees and clinical support staff were more receptive to interventions. Increasing distance from home to work was significantly associated with a greater likelihood to report to work for employees who received time off. Conclusions Hospital administrators should consider the implications of barriers and areas of residence on the disaster response capacity of their workforce. Our findings underscore communication and development of preparedness plans to improve the resilience of hospital workers to mitigate absenteeism (Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness. 2015;9:175-185)

Broadcasting Flu Messages – Citywide Transmission and Community Reception: An Evaluation of Ready New York’s pandemic influenza outreach campaign

Public health risk communication is a central feature of New York City’s pandemic flu preparedness plan. Particularly in the early stages of a pandemic, before effective therapeutic measures are available, non-pharmaceutical interventions such as social distancing, personal protective hygiene, and voluntary isolation are critical strategies for suppressing the spread of a novel viral strain. New York City health and emergency management officials have decided to use the city’s risk communication structure – the Office of Emergency Management’s Ready New York outreach and dissemination capacities – as one of the primary means to communicate pandemic flu health messages. In October 2008, NCDP contracted with Public Health Solutions and the Office of Emergency Management (OEM) to evaluate the reach and effectiveness of its planned Ready NY Pandemic Flu community outreach campaign

A Philanthropic Approach to Supporting Emergent Disaster Response and Recovery

In August 2017, Hurricane Harvey struck the US Gulf Coast and caused more than US $125 billion in damages in Texas. The loss of lives and the economic damages resulted in an outpouring of support for the recovery efforts in the form of federal assistance and private donations. The latter has supported more creative approaches to recovery. Organizations that normally would not receive funding were able to obtain resources to use in novel manners. Using the framework of Dynes typology to identify groups and their respective structures and tasks, this report from the field analyzes Hurricane Harvey and the financial support mechanisms used to support recovery efforts in Texas, what organizations were funded to do, and where they fit into Dynes typology. The authors close by noting the importance of these emerging organizations and the need to support diversity in funding disaster response and recovery efforts beyond large nonprofit organizations

Planning for Long‐Term Recovery Before Disaster Strikes: Case Studies of 4 US Cities: A Final Project Report

Among the four phases along the hazard continuum -- preparedness, response, recovery, and mitigation -- the sub‐field of long‐term recovery has long been an outlier, an "orphan" when it comes to concerted policy attention and pre‐disaster planning. It's not that community residents or municipal and state government officials are unaware of the potential long‐term residual consequences of natural disasters. Since the attacks of September 11, 2001 and the subsequent creation of the Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. government has spent billions of dollars to upgrade and enhance the country's ability to detect and respond to major catastrophic events, whether man‐made or natural in origin. The country experienced catastrophic wildfires in 2003, 2007‐2008, and 2011, a regional electrical blackout affecting 9 states and part of Canada in 2003, major Midwest flooding in 2008 and again this year, Category 3 or greater hurricanes in 2004, 2005, and 2008, and significant tornado clusters in 2011 that claimed 529 lives and caused over $17 billion in damages. These hazards have struck virtually every region of the country, and the consequences are readily evident to emergency managers and local city and county. Although the ratio of uncovered to covered losses has declined over this three‐decade timeframe, from approximately 8:1 to 4:1, absolute dollar losses have escalated tremendously. This may represent gains in mitigation efforts to insure against losses in high‐risk areas, but the size and growth of uncovered losses suggest a growing recovery challenge. This difference between covered and uncovered losses reflects the absolute minimum investment required for affected areas to return to pre‐event conditions, much less build back to a better or higher standard. Furthermore, what this trend line cannot capture are those disaster consequences not so easily monetized -- diminished physical and mental health among an affected citizenry, loss of a sense of community and attachment to place, or large scale social disruptions or population displacements. Given the magnitude of the social investment needed to pursue long‐term recovery after a disaster, and the attention that other phases in the hazard continuum have experienced, why is recovery still a policy orphan, and what are the local implications for pre‐disaster planning for long‐term recovery

Unanticipated Consequences of a Pandemic Flu in New York City: A Neighborhood Focus Group Study

There is fairly consistent evidence that ethnic and minority communities have historically been more vulnerable to disasters, less trusting of public authority, and often so socially marginalized that it placed them in harm’s way. In an effort to explore some of these issues we conducted a series of community-based focus groups among selected ethnic communities in order to understand how perceptions of neighborhood life during a pandemic -- and community adaptation -- might vary across the city. We conducted the focus groups in six distinct New York City neighborhoods, each meant to represent a particular ethnic sub-group: Jamaican- Americans in Wakefield, Bronx; Chinese-Americans in Chinatown; African-Americans in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn; Dominican-Americans in Washington Heights; Greek-Americans in Astoria, Queens; and South Indian-Americans in Flushing, Queens. Four of the focus groups were conducted in English, one was in Spanish, and one was in Mandarin, Chinese

Exploring Community Needs for Disaster Shelters Using Cultural Probes

During disasters, emergency shelters play a central role in emergency management, providing both a secure environment and centralized sites for the distribution of information, material relief supplies, and access to health and human services. Despite their importance, challenges such as physical access, public awareness, and peoples’ willingness to relocate limit the impact of both shelters managed by emergency responders and informal locations created by affected communities. This paper presents research conducted as part of a long-term project aimed at designing digital tools to assist communities and formal responders plan and manage emergency shelters. Working with partners in Puerto Rico, we developed and distributed cultural probes in three communities with recent experience of hurricanes and earthquakes to better understand the needs and resources of disaster affected people related to shelter. This approach yielded novel insights that challenge and expand traditional views of emergency shelters and identified several areas where HCI research and design can contribute to the sector

Impact on Children and Families of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill: Preliminary Findings of the Coastal Population Impact Study

Although the ruptured Deepwater Horizon oil well was capped on July 15, 2010, an estimated 3 to 5 million barrels of oil spilled in to the Gulf of Mexico over a three-month period. Several surveys prior to the capping of the well documented the concerns and immediate effects of the oil spill on coastal residents. One report by a team of LSU sociologists highlighted the anxiety caused by the oil spill - nearly 60% of the 925 coastal Louisiana residents interviewed said they were almost constantly worried by the oil spill. As the "acute phase" of the oil spill transitions to a longer-term "chronic phase," researchers at Columbia University's National Center for Disaster Preparedness, in collaboration with the Children's Health Fund and The Marist Poll, interviewed over 1,200 coastal residents in Louisiana and Mississippi, with a particular focus on the short- and potential long-term impact of the disaster on children. This study was informed by work the researchers have done post-Katrina as part of the Gulf Coast Child & Family Health Study, which has documented the enduring effects on impacted populations in the two states, particularly children

Second Wind: The Impact of Hurricane Gustav on Children and Families Who Survived Katrina

The category 2 Hurricane Gustav made landfall on the Louisiana Coast on Sept. 1, 2008, nearly three years to the day after Hurricane Katrina, resulting in an evacuation of approximately 2 million people and considerable property damage. Although it did not match the intensity or consequence of Hurricane Katrina, the experience of anticipating and responding to Hurricane Gustav had the potential to trigger emotional and physical consequences among a population previously traumatized or displaced by Hurricane Katrina. Gustav also had the potential to exert a considerable impact upon the overall economic, social, and emotional recovery of these populations. The Gulf Coast Child and Family Health Study (G-CAFH), a randomly-sampled post-Katrina longitudinal cohort study of 1,079 displaced and impacted households in Louisiana and Mississippi, was uniquely positioned to examine the evolving impact of Gustav upon a previously traumatized population. G-CAFH researchers were in the final stages of the third round of interviews with the study group when Hurricane Gustav struck, thus allowing for comparable pre- and post-event data for approximately 700 respondent households. Further information on the study, including previous reports and peer-reviewed research articles, may be found at www.gcafh.org. In particular, the research team was interested in the following issues: Evacuation: People's response to the event itself -- did they evacuate, and if so, where and how did they evacuate? How did people decide whether to evacuate or not? For those who did, what was the economic impact of the evacuation? Recovery Impact: What was the impact on post-Katrina recovery amongst this group, particularly since Hurricane Gustav may have set some people even further back in their efforts to recover their homes and their lives? Psychological Impact: What was the emotional impact on adults and children: among adults, did Hurricane Gustav trigger Katrina-related post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms? Among children, did Hurricane Gustav lead to newly experienced behavioral or emotional problems? Health Effects: What were the health consequences of Hurricane Gustav on children, particularly those who needed access to medications and medical care? Within three weeks of Hurricane Gustav, the G-CAFH field team had reassembled after their own evacuation and begun re-contacting the 718 respondents whom they had recently interviewed as part of the third round of the study. Of these 718 respondents, 528 were located and interviewed (a 73.5% retention rate). Respondents received a $20 gift card for participating in this study supplement, which had received approval by the Columbia University Medical Center Institutional Review Board

Children’s Health after the Oil Spill: A Four-State Study Findings from the Gulf Coast Population Impact (GCPI) Project

In 2012, with funding from the Baton Rouge Area Foundation, the National Center for Disaster Preparedness (NCDP) at Columbia University, in partnership with the Children’s Health Fund, launched a four-state study in order (1) to identify communities of children in the coastal areas of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida who were adversely impacted by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, (2) to explore the prevalence of physical and mental health effects among these children, and (3) to conduct a preliminary assessment of the health services available to these children and the potential for targeted interventions or health system enhancements. We identified fifteen communities with higher numbers of BP compensation claims submitted by individuals and by businesses, and which also had higher rates of oil washing up on their shores based upon monitoring data collected by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Over a span of four and a half months, a field team of six interviewers and two field coordinators completed 1,437 face-to-face household surveys. The parents whom we interviewed reported considerable exposure to the oil spill as well as a number of physical and mental health problems among their children. Over half of the parents interviewed in these highly-impacted communities reported that their children had some type of oil spill-related exposure, whether it was through physical, environmental, or economic factors. One in every five parents said their children had direct contact with the oil; one in four reported smelling strong oil-related odors; and two of every five said their household had lost income or a job since the oil spill. A little over 40% of parents in these high-impact communities reported some type of health effect experienced by their children since the oil spill. 18.1% of the parents said their children had experienced breathing problems after the oil spill, 14.8% noted skin problems, 16.0% reported visual problems and 21.6% mentioned emotional or behavioral problems since the oil spill. In October 2012 our research team traveled to four communities to interview local officials and leaders and conduct in-depth parent focus groups. We selected the four communities based on the household data, where parents had reported significant health effects. Across the four communities, the team heard of significant issues related to children’s health and well-being