271650 Resilience and Vulnerabilities of Children and Families, Post-Disaster

Monday, October 29, 2012 : 8:45 AM - 9:00 AM

David M. Abramson, PhD MPH , National Center for Disaster Preparedness, Columbia University, New York, NY
The disasters of Hurricane Katrina and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill have exposed the residents of the US Gulf Coast to the largest natural hazard and the largest technological accident the country has experienced in a century. This presentation will use findings from the Gulf Coast Child & Family Health Study, a longitudinal cohort study of over 1,000 randomly sampled residents of Louisiana and Mississippi who were followed for five years after Katrina, and from the Coastal Population Impact Project, which began with a survey of 1,200 coastal residents in the immediate aftermath of the oil spill and has conducted 2,000 household interviews in the Spring of 2012, to reflect upon the vulnerabilities and resilience of coastal residents. Children, in particular, may serve as bellwethers of recovery -- when the formal and informal systems around them are functional, they are more likely to be able to recover from such devastating traumas. When these systems are themselves still disrupted, damaged, or destroyed, the children often languish.

Learning Areas:
Administration, management, leadership
Epidemiology
Public health or related research
Social and behavioral sciences
Systems thinking models (conceptual and theoretical models), applications related to public health

Learning Objectives:
Compare the similarities and differences between a catastrophic natural hazard(Katrina) and a catastrophic technological accident (oil spill). Describe the public health approach to population assessment and community recovery elicited by these disasters. Identify the unique vulnerabilities and resilience of children.

Keywords: Adult and Child Mental Health, Disasters

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I am the principal investigator of both the Gulf Coast Child and Family Health Study and the Gulf Coast Population Impact study, both of which I will be reporting on.
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.