Evaluation of the public health system response to Hurricane Sandy in the NY metro area

The National Center for Disaster Preparedness, Columbia University, is conducting a CDC funded study to examine the challenges that arose for two local public health agencies (Nassau and Westchester Counties, New York) immediately before, during, and after Hurricane Sandy struck the New York City region. This project is informed by recent theoretical work that frames capacity, competency, and capability as ways to analyze public health work performance. Applied to a disaster setting, the study’s goals are to: (1) develop a chronology of key Emergency Operations Center (EOC) decisions which had an impact on each county’s disaster response operations, (2) elucidate how complex organizations function during times of extreme duress by illustrating how the health department operations were impacted by the disaster, and (3) determine how public health workers can improve upon their disaster response and recovery strategies, particularly when working with socially vulnerable communities. Results will be gathered using a triangulation approach of interviews and focus groups with more than 80 public health staff, and abstraction of documents. Findings pertaining to the chronology and interview / focus groups will be presented, along with the identification of capability-based training themes used to develop modular trainings to be implemented during the second year of the project.