BACKGROUND Disaster medicine education is an enormous challenge, but indispensable for disaster preparedness. AIMS We aimed to develop and implement a disaster medicine curriculum for medical student education that can serve as a peer-reviewed, structured educational guide and resource. Additionally, the process of designing, approving and implementing such a curriculum is presented. METHOD...

Nurses play an important role in responding to disasters. Preparing nurses to participate in planning for and responding to a disaster is integral to undergraduate nursing education. The authors describe the evaluation of a collaborative learning model that has been used to teach undergraduate nursing students about disaster preparedness.

THE INCAPACITATING BLOWS dealt to the New Orleans, Louisiana, health care infrastructure by Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath are unprecedented in the United States. Much can be learned about disaster preparedness from the events that unfolded in New Orleans after Katrina swept the Gulf shoreline. Problem areas in the management of this disaster such as internal and external communication fai...

INTRODUCTION The ongoing threat of a terrorist attack places public agencies under increasing pressure to ensure readiness in the event of a disaster. Yet, little published information exists regarding the current state of readiness, which would allow local and regional organizations to develop disaster preparedness plans that would function seamlessly across service areas. The objective of thi...

BACKGROUND We explore the health care literature and draw on two decades of experience in the provision of medical care at mass gatherings and special events to illustrate the complementary aspects of mass gathering medical support and disaster medicine. Most communities have occasions during which large numbers of people assemble in public or private spaces for the purpose of celebrating or pa...

After the Great Hanshin-Awaji earthquake of 1995 and the 2004 tsunami disaster in the Indian Ocean, the United Nation’s International Strategy for Disaster Reduction sponsored the World Conference on Disaster Reduction, which was hosted by Japan in 2005. Its heralded product, the Hyogo Declaration, challenged governmental and non-governmental experts worldwide to find ways to reduce the increas...

Results of a cross-sectional study to determine the level of emergency and disaster response planning at Ohio nonhuman animal shelters and the role Ohio agencies have in emergency and disaster response planning in their communities indicated a lack of preparedness coupled with underutilization of the agencies as a resource. A total of 115 agencies (68%) responded to a standardized survey mailed...

This perspective piece explores both social chaos and disaster preparedness as mythologies that are a persistent part of problems with disaster communication. It argues that while extant scholarship acknowledges disaster myths that advance the belief that social chaos and, for example, looting is common is problematic, there has not been much done to mitigate this in practice. Furthermore, the ...

Only 40-50% of households in the United States are currently disaster prepared. In this intervention study, respondent-driven sampling was used to select a sample (n = 187) of low income, Latino residents of Los Angeles County, randomly assigned into two treatment conditions: (i) household preparedness education received through 'promotora' (community health worker) led small group meetings, an...