Validating Indicators of Disaster Recovery with Qualitative Research
Conclusions
Overall, participants responded in a positive manner to both the concept of the Recovery Indicators Tool as well as its content. Following the completion of the key informant feedback phase of this project, the research team has amended the Focus Areas and accompanying metrics in order to incorporate the comments received, including combining redundant Focus Areas and metrics, organizing the Focus Areas within thematic groupings for purposes of clarity, and designating metrics relating to equity considerations within a recovering community (Figure 1). This updated version of the metrics will be used in the next...
Source: PLOS Currents Disasters - December 16, 2014 Category: Global & Universal Authors: jen.horney at gmail.com Source Type: research
Communicable Diseases Surveillance System in East Azerbaijan Earthquake: Strengths and Weaknesses
Conclusion
The established surveillance system functioned well in controlling CDs in the earthquake-stricken regions of East Azerbaijan. Because, no significant outbreak was reported until the end of December 2012 (when the surveillance system was active) although it was summer and the affected regions were susceptible to outbreaks of CD. However, there were some weaknesses in implementing and developing the SS.
Considering the susceptibility of Iran to various natural hazards, designing a web-based surveillance system for recording and collecting data is essential at the time of disaster.
The authors also suggest that re...
Source: PLOS Currents Disasters - December 8, 2014 Category: Global & Universal Authors: javad Source Type: research
Variables Associated with Effects on Morbidity in Older Adults Following Disasters
Conclusion
Older adults are at a known risk for increased morbidity during and shortly after disasters and catastrophic events, especially in the presence of multiple co-morbidities such as hypertension, diabetes, stroke, and heart disease. Other factors, such as the need for prescription medications, low social support, visual and hearing impairment, impaired mobility, and poor economic status, have also been associated with an increased risk of negative health outcomes. The utilization of existing databases of older adults’ vulnerabilities and the measurement of the prevalence of these risk factors in the community may...
Source: PLOS Currents Disasters - December 5, 2014 Category: Global & Universal Authors: jenkins at jhmi.edu Source Type: research
The Race to Save Lives: Demonstrating the Use of Social Media for Search and Rescue Operations
Conclusions
Social media provides a standardized and familiar platform that can serve to create bridges, offering options for cooperation, coordination and collaboration in order to improve preparedness and response to emergencies. Utilizing social media in an emergency, as was well displayed during the exercise conducted in the present study, enabled to locate and evacuate casualties more rapidly and effectively. Thus, social media can contribute towards saving lives during a disaster. Nevertheless, it is recommended that the social media emergency exercise be further implemented and validated in other emergency scenarios...
Source: PLOS Currents Disasters - November 6, 2014 Category: Global & Universal Authors: Tomer Simon Source Type: research
Challenges for Resuming Normal Life After Earthquake: A Qualitative Study on Rural Areas of Iran
Conclusion
According to the results of the current study, an effective rehabilitation plan needs a comprehensive management system that first of all should be approved and understood by people, intermediary and governmental institutions, and other beneficiaries. In addition, an effective rehabilitation plan also needs a common understanding, considering the complicated and multi-dimensional, dynamic and long term nature of getting back to the normal life with maximum rate of people’s participation. Rehabilitation is prior to reconstruction, but still most of the people and disaster management affiliated organizations in ...
Source: PLOS Currents Disasters - October 17, 2014 Category: Global & Universal Authors: Fardin Alipour Source Type: research
Patient Reactions after the Canterbury Earthquakes 2010-11: A Primary Care Perspective
Discussion
The GP interviews indicate that patients experienced stress and anxiety as a result of the earthquakes, though the impact of this differed depending on individual patients’ circumstances. Many patients just wanted to talk through their experience and get reassurance that their feelings were normal. Interestingly some GPs identified ‘waves’ of different patient groups consulting at different times with higher levels of psychological distress coming some weeks after the earthquake. This could reflect people moving through the early phases of the disaster which have been termed ‘heroic’ and ‘honeymoon...
Source: PLOS Currents Disasters - October 2, 2014 Category: Global & Universal Authors: sarbjitjohal Source Type: research
The EnRiCH Community Resilience Framework for High-Risk Populations
We present the EnRiCH Community Resilience Framework for High-Risk Populations, which describes an integrated, upstream-downstream approach combining principles from health promotion, community-based participatory research, complex adaptive systems, group dynamics, organizational behaviour and disaster management. Following an explanation of the empirical methods and core components of this framework, we present strategic areas for intervention that can be used to enhance resilience amongst high-risk groups in a community. Finally, we discuss broader implications of adopting this asset-based approach for disaster preparedn...
Source: PLOS Currents Disasters - October 2, 2014 Category: Global & Universal Authors: Tracey O'Sullivan Source Type: research
Evolution of a Search: The Use of Dynamic Twitter Searches During Superstorm Sandy
Conclusion
The most important lesson learned from Superstorm Sandy was the need for a dynamic and flexible monitoring process and strategy to understand and respond quickly to health needs in the areas impacted by Superstorm Sandy. Search strategies should change as frequently as the unfolding event. The inability to adapt to a changing situation ensures stale and stagnant terminology and search results. Twitter lists and Boolean searches should be used together to maximize situational awareness. The most important information comes from the impacted population, whether news, local government or local citizens. These are t...
Source: PLOS Currents Disasters - September 26, 2014 Category: Global & Universal Authors: Sara Harris Smith Source Type: research
Site Selection Criteria for Sheltering after Earthquakes: A Systematic Review
This study is a systematic review and reports according to Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guideline. The search for scholarly articles was conducted in April 2014 and covered the articles that were published by the end of April 2014 without any limitation on publication year.
We searched PubMed, Scopus, ProQuest Research Library, Ovid,Science Direct, and Google Scholar as our databases without any limitation.
The search terms and keywords were selected after consulting with the relief experts and disaster management researchers. The main search terms applied in three parts: 1) k...
Source: PLOS Currents Disasters - August 29, 2014 Category: Global & Universal Authors: soltani Source Type: research
Optimizing the Use of Chief Complaint & Diagnosis for Operational Decision Making: An EMR Case Study of the 2010 Haiti Earthquake
Conclusion
The intent of this work was to develop and assess if providing a new combined variable (i.e., Operational Code), which reflected both primary discharge diagnosis and chief complaint data was more informative and enable better operational decision-making than either field alone. High percentages of missing data regarding patient encounters leaves a situational awareness gap, and decisions on what resource and personnel needs are emerging cannot easily be made. The methods described above for providing more details about patient encounters by using combined insight from both diagnosis and chief complaints improved...
Source: PLOS Currents Disasters - August 27, 2014 Category: Global & Universal Authors: Alexandra T. Bambrick Source Type: research
The Effectiveness of Disaster Risk Communication: A Systematic Review of Intervention Studies
The objectives of the interventions were to improve the health knowledge and behaviour in relation to disasters, and to decrease the incidence of negative health events. The studies were chosen on that basis, and several studies reported additional outcomes that were outside the scope of this review. The knowledge, behaviour and incidence outcomes are described in detail in Appendix 3 (characteristics and results of included studies).
Results of Individual Studies
1 Effect of Risk Communication Interventions to Promote Disaster Mitigation and Preparedness
1.1 Communication to Promote Mitigation and Preparedness for Infec...
Source: PLOS Currents Disasters - August 22, 2014 Category: Global & Universal Authors: dtbradley Source Type: research
A Research Agenda for Humanitarian Health Ethics
Conclusion
While there has been increased discussion of humanitarian health ethics within and among humanitarian agencies, intergovernmental organizations, and the academy, participants at the HHE Forum identified five main areas of inquiry that would benefit from careful and sustained analysis. First, there has been limited investigation of experiences related to humanitarian health ethics from the perspective of various groups, including those of members of host communities. Second, there is uncertainty about the most effective means to provide ethics training and professional development for those involved in humanitari...
Source: PLOS Currents Disasters - August 12, 2014 Category: Global & Universal Authors: matthewhunt Source Type: research
Combining Dedicated Online Training and Apprenticeships in the Field to Assist in Professionalization of Humanitarian Aid Workers: a 2-year Pilot Project for Anesthesia and Intensive Care Residents Working in Resource Constrained and Low-income Countries
Introduction
In 2010 there was an estimated total 274,000 humanitarian workers worldwide with a growth rate of 4% from the previous year. Although the system is still dominated, in terms of operational presence and resource share, by a small group of NGOs and international organizations whose combined humanitarian expenditure in 2010 exceeded $2.7 billion, there are an estimated 4,400 NGOs worldwide that undertake humanitarian action on an ongoing basis1 .
This heterogeneous and fragmented nature of the humanitarian sector has hindered its ability to efficiently respond to crises worldwide2 , and concerns have been express...
Source: PLOS Currents Disasters - July 21, 2014 Category: Global & Universal Authors: Marco Foletti Source Type: research
PLOS Currents: Disasters
● Peer-Reviewed by distinguished researchers ● Open Access and freely available to all ● Open Data Compliant ● Archived in PubMed Central ● Indexed in PubMed & Scopus ● No Publication Fee (Source: PLOS Currents Disasters)
Source: PLOS Currents Disasters - April 25, 2013 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Liz Flavall Tags: carousel Source Type: research
