Guidelines and Policy Implications for Disaster Preparedness among Communities with Limited English Proficiency

Given the inadequate functional directives on working with limited English proficiency (LEP) communities on disaster preparedness, the City of Houston Department of Health and Human Services developed policy recommendations for local emergency preparedness and management officials, based on input from LEP community members, a group that frequently suffered from inequities in health and social justice. The recommendations and guidelines were developed to improve dissemination of disaster preparedness information to LEP communities. Sixteen focus group discussions and sixteen key informant interviews were conducted among Chinese, Vietnamese, Spanish and Somali speaking immigrants with limited English proficiency. From the qualitative inquiries, we identified fundamental questions that need to be considered by planners while developing outreach and communication plans. They are: 1) How long has the community been established in the US? 2) What is the community's primary mode of communication? 3) What are the available community resources that can be leveraged to address disaster preparedness needs? 4) What are the preferred and trusted sources of information? and 5) What has been their experience with “government agencies”? In this interactive session, we plan to discuss a conceptual model for working with LEP communities and explore the possibilities of using an adapted version of the model to reach communities of LEP immigrants for public health interventions.