Disaster Exposure and Health Impacts Among Children

Background:   Disasters create extraordinary stresses in children’s lives, disrupting routines, damaging homes and schools, compromising protective social networks, and occasionally resulting in familial death or disability. Superstorm Sandy proved to be a devastating weather event.  In New Jersey it damaged 325,000 homes, left 2.6 million residents without power, and caused over $30 billion in damages.  The Sandy Child and Family Health Study (S-CAFH) objectives include assessing children’s exposure and health outcomes.

Methods: S-CAFH is an observational cohort study of 1,000 randomly sampled New Jersey households exposed to the storm. In-person interviews were conducted with one adult in each household (completed Feb 2015) and with one sampled child between the ages of 10-17 at the time of the storm (completed May 2015).  Parents report on their child’s incident health conditions, mental health and emotional distress, high-risk behaviors, and academic outcomes. Adolescents are surveyed about their experience and perception of types of direct exposure, including sense of life threat, physical harm, material damage or loss, social disruption, and displacement, as well as their perception of their health status, high-risk behaviors, coping and self-efficacy, and academic outcomes.

Findings:  Over 40% of parents reported mental health distress among their children.  Households with children were particularly vulnerable, and were more likely to report loss of jobs and significant financial constraints after the storm. A structural equation model estimates the combined effects of individual, household, and communal factors on children’s health.

Conclusions: Household and communal contextual factors are significant factors in children’s health and well-being.