This paper extends findings on implicit racial bias to public opinion concerning natural disasters. Using an online experiment, we show that racial cues embedded in news coverage of Hurricane Katrina influenced public support for governmental disaster assistance. First, exposure to a white rather than African-American hurricane victim made participants more likely to cite the federal government...

About the author: I am a fellow at the Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma and adjunct faculty at the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University, and I privately practice psychology in New York City. A few days after Katrina’s landfall I participated in a needs assessmentwith the National Center for Disaster Preparedness. While at the George R. Brown center in Houston, Texas...

Following large-scale disasters and major complex emergencies, especially in resource-poor settings, emergency surgery is practiced by Foreign Medical Teams (FMTs) sent by governmental and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). These surgical experiences have not yielded an appropriate standardized collection of data and reporting to meet standards required by national authorities, the World He...

We propose coordination mechanisms for multiple heterogeneous physical agents that operate in city-scale disaster scenarios, where they need to find and rescue people and extinguish fires. Large scale disasters are characterized by limited and unreliable communications, dangerous events that may disable agents, uncertainty about the location, duration and type of tasks, and stringent temporal c...

On 26 December 2004, a huge tsunami struck the coasts of South Asian countries and it resulted in 29,729 deaths and 16,665 injuries in Sri Lanka. This study characterizes the epidemiology, clinical data and time course of the medical problems seen by a Korean disaster medical assistance team (DMAT) during its deployment in Sri Lanka, from 2 to 8 January 2005. The team consisting of 20 surgical ...

Communication facilities can totally be destroyed by natural and / or manmade disasters. A critical problem after disaster is getting the first hand knowledge of the destructions and also establishing some communication links among the survivors. This paper focuses on the vital need for providing communications facility to the victims, immediately after the disaster and prior to the arrival of ...

never been the subject of any serious illness, walked two miles to school during heavy rain on December igth, and sat all day in wet boots. The next morning she complained of being unable to get out of bed, owing to her legs being "stiff." She remained in bed that day, and as the " stiffness" increased on the following morning, the 21st, medical assistance was sought.

BACKGROUND Amid continuing social unrest from the Great East Japan Earthquake and subsequent Fukushima nuclear accident of 2011, the Japanese government announced plans for a major biobanking project in the disaster-stricken areas, to be administered by the 'Tohoku Medical Megabank Organization' (ToMMo). This project differs from previous biobanking projects in that it 1) was initiated mainly t...

BACKGROUND Critical analysis of shortcomings of emergency medical management of earthquake casualties will provide an invaluable insight to improve outcomes for future events. Using a critical analysis methodology to evaluate the quality of emergency medical management after Bam earthquake, we suggest a practical strategic approach to decrease morbidity and mortality after such events. METHOD...