208624 Promoting post-disaster resilience and mental health through community capacity building in New Orleans

Tuesday, November 10, 2009: 11:00 AM

Brittany T. Butler, BA , REACH NOLA, New Orleans, LA
Benjamin Springgate, MD, MPH , RAND Corporation and Tulane School of Medicine, New Orleans, LA
Caricia Catalani, MPH, DrPH , Doctor of Public Health Program, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA
  
Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, associated levee failures, and further disaster sequella resulted in dramatic and unusually prolonged increases in the prevalence of symptoms of stress, depression, and PTSD among the affected populations, while simultaneously crippling recovery capacities of numerous community agencies. We will map the residual and emerging capacities of a network of community-based organizations (CBOs) in a post-disaster community in the United States, onto a theoretical model of community resilience, to identify opportunities and challenges for improving community resilience and population mental health during the continuing disaster recovery period. We will relate these opportunities and challenges to ongoing risks of recurrent disaster still faced by New Orleans. We will review three capacity-building strategies that we have employed in the context of this network of CBOs (the REACH NOLA health partnership) to enhance community resilience and population mental health, and illustrate these strategies with specific examples.

Learning Objectives:
1. Identify rationale for addressing community resilience and mental health as critical public health challenges in post-disaster, water-threatened settings 2. Describe opportunities and challenges to promoting community resilience and improving population mental health by mapping existing capacities for recovery onto a theoretical model for community resilience 3. Identify three strategies employed to enhance community resilience and population mental health, illustrated by specific examples

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I have a BA in Psychology from Yale. I am Project Manager of the Health and Resilience Project. I have published the following articles: Patel K, Butler B, Wells K. What Is Necessary To Transform The Quality Of Mental Health Care. Health Affairs 25, no. 3 (2006): 681-693 Jones D, Franklin C, Butler BT, et al. The Building Wellness Project: A Case History of Partnership, Power Sharing & Compromise. Ethnicity & Disease 16, no.1 (2006, suppl 1): 54-66 Schoenbaum M, B Butler, G Norquist, G Sullivan, N Duan, S Kataoka, B Springgate, K Wells. “Promoting Mental Health Recovery After Hurricanes Katrina and Rita: What Could We Have Done At What Cost?” accepted in Archives of General Psychiatry pub date TBD.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.

See more of: Planning, Implementing, and Assessing Programming that Meets Social and Mental Health Needs of Special Populations
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