MEASURING DISASTER RESILIENCE BY MEASURING HEALTH

Truly living with dynamic landscapes requires more than cognitively understanding or simply surviving the physical realities of a natural disaster. There are other effects (psychological and social) on daily life that individuals must respond to and which influence community recovery. Our study applies the principles and methods of preventive medicine and public health towards developing community capacity to self-manage disaster risk, enhance coping ability and promote healthy outcomes before disaster strikes.

Within the health sciences, Quality of Life (QOL) research is a widely recognized sub discipline and offers a broad model for measuring physical, mental and social health. To gauge potential community resilience to displacement from future earthquake and tsunami in Wellington, New Zealand, we operationalized QOL by examining the relationship between evacuation preparedness behaviors and subjective health-related indicators (motivation, general health status, well-being, and social support). We also measured cognitive perception of physical vulnerability and risk.

We administered our quantitative epidemiological survey (“The Wellington Disaster Prevention Study”) at the community level to the general adult population and are currently analyzing responses (est. n= 650-700). We report on the incidence and distribution of health status and evacuation preparedness behavior, preliminary associations between predictor and outcome variables, and emerging needs for preparedness messaging.

Our approach presents a novel, evidence-based method for assessing community needs, finding logical points for intervention and evaluating future preparedness planning. Integrating health indicators into geological risk assessments can yield a clearer picture of both objective and subjective realities for at-risk populations, and enhance community capacity to rebuild and create “a life worth living” after a disaster.