Journal of Emergency Management: JEM

Every disaster often holds a potential for significant impacts on human health and life. Every new threat presents new challenges to health risk management. However, family medicine faces an uncertainty on the specific roles it can assume to support urgent efforts at disaster surge response. Its preparedness level remains unknown. This research project, designed to explore issues of family medicine competency in this changed disaster response environment, conducted a disaster preparedness and response workshop among 28 family medicine physicians, testing their learning rate using a pre-test-post-test data collection method...

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to determine if providing mass casualty training, utilizing the Bleeding Control for the Injured (B-Con) course would allow participants to feel more confident to provide bystander aid to wounded victims in a mass casualty incident (MCI). DESIGN: Quasi-experimental pre-post intervention study. SETTING: Participants were healthcare providers attending a trauma research conference hosted by a medical university...

This study seeks to understand the public service motivations (PSMs) of professional emergency managers. In order to do this, county-level emergency managers completed an electronic survey designed to measure their PSM using standard PSM measures developed by Perry in 1996 along with my own emergency management specific measures. The survey results strongly indicate that county-level emergency managers have high levels of PSM, and they have a strong desire to specifically be emergency managers.

A 2008 content analysis of state emergency management agency Web sites showed that they tended to be internally focused and needed to be more citizen-focused and journalist friendly. The study was replicated in 2017. Because of changes in technology and agency missions, the content richness indicators were expanded. The study shows an increased acceptance of Internet and social communication. However, it also shows that the full potential of social media in emergency communication has not been reached.

OBJECTIVE: This study sought to determine whether differences exist in disaster preparedness between Upstate and Downstate community hospitals in New York. DESIGN: A descriptive and analytical cross-sectional survey study was conducted using a 35-element questionnaire. These questions examined six disaster preparedness components: disaster plan development, onsite surge capacity, available materials and resources, disaster education and training, disaster preparedness funding levels, and perception of disaster preparedness...

Results from previous research suggest that the ability to manage ambiguous problems during acute emergency and disaster management is a desirable quality among decision-makers. Ambiguity is a perception that arises when the problem-solver is dissatisfied with his or her understanding of the structure of the problem, and consequently of the problem-solving process. This article presents the results of an empirical study of ambiguity tolerance among Swedish fire commanders. Two different personality tests have been employed...

This article examines 9-1-1 call data of the City of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada over a year to find discernible spatial and temporal trends that may be useful to emergency response or better delivery of emergency management services. The spatial analysis includes Geographic Information Systems hotspot analysis of cellular and landline emergency calls with respect to critical (emergency and healthcare) facilities as well as emergency calls from residential landlines. The temporal analysis looks at hourly, daily, and monthly patterns of emergency calls and the factors driving up the call volumes in certain periods...

BACKGROUND: The Center for Devices and Radiological Health, Food and Drug Administration (FDA) launched a collaborative initiative with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to gain a better understanding of ventilators that are used during national emergencies. This initiative was intended to test reliability of ventilator devices stored long term in the CDC Strategic National Stockpile (SNS) and also used by the Department of Defense. These ventilators are intended to be used by trained operators to provide ventilatory support to adult and pediatric populations under diverse environmental conditions...

The impact of the Commissioned Corps of the US Public Health Service (Commissioned Corps) on the health and safety of the nation spans more than two centuries. The public health efforts of the highly qualified health professionals of this often-underreported uniformed service include fighting threats like the great flu pandemic of 1918, the anthrax attacks, Ebola, and natural disasters such as Hurricanes Maria, Irma, and Katrina. As we near the first quarter of the twenty-first century, it is important to take a snapshot of the critical contributions and response efforts the Commissioned Corps has made in the first 18 years of the twenty-first century...

Place attachment is the social, emotional, and functional bond people experience with a specific geographic area. The formation of this bond is based on several different characteristics of the place, such as property values, local relationships, and employment opportunities as well as the internal attributes of a person, such as age, gender, and income. While gaining an understanding of place attachment through these characteristics and attributes is indispensable to our understanding of disaster recovery, few studies have explored this relationship using qualitative methods...

OBJECTIVE: The objective of this research was to develop a computer simulation model that will provide the most optimal allocation of resources for a point of distribution (POD) site. DESIGN: A baseline assessment was conducted by participants establishing POD sections with no guidance from the investigator. A computer model was built with four stations: triage, registration, screening, and dispensing. The information from the computer simulation was used to design the allocation of volunteers for the experimental group...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

Active shooters, tornadoes, fires, floods, and power outages are concerns for every new student entering college. New students enter college with a variety of academic and nonacademic anxieties. Students express concerns of their study skills, as well as their ability to manage financial and social responsibilities, but seldom does a new student worry about personal safety or disasters. The first few minutes of an emergency can mean the difference between life and death. Candlelight vigils showing incredible sorrow among college students may become more frequent as active shooter incidents continue to increase in frequency and will undoubtedly occur again...

OBJECTIVE: To determine disaster response-related contexts and themes of Facebook posts that were communicated on the "Snowed Out Atlanta" Facebook page in response to winter storm Leon in 2014. DESIGN: A content analysis. PARTICIPANTS: A sample of 537 posts from the "Snowed Out Atlanta" Facebook page posted between January 29, 2014 and February 4, 2014. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: (1) Disaster response-related contexts and themes of Facebook posts communicated in response to winter storm Leon; (2) the shift in the contexts and themes of posts following the storm; and (3) health-related significance of posts for disaster epidemiology purposes...

The aim of this exploratory case study was to examine whether sensemaking processes may influence decision-making of emergency call center dispatchers when dealing with maritime crises. This article focuses on sensemaking and decision-making in an emergency services context using Norwegian operators as a case and reports on data collected from five focus-group interviews with emergency dispatchers at five different locations. Each focus group consisted of three dispatchers, representing the three main Norwegian emergency response dispatch centers: police, fire and rescue, and the Emergency Medical Communication Centre (AMK)...

Few examples of enterprise geographic information systems (GISs) implementation are as important and illustrative as the use of GIS to support the four stages of emergency management (EM). The full range of data required to support the four stages of EM are much greater, then any one department can be responsible for by itself. Only with an enterprise-wide GIS perspective can the full range of required data elements be made available to the emergency manager. Most critically, to keep these data sets accurate and up to date, the emergency manager must rely on other agencies and functions to keep all the data current...

OBJECTIVE: The intent of this study was to assess disaster preparedness in community hospitals across New York. DESIGN: Descriptive and analytical cross-sectional survey study. The survey instrument consisted of 35 questions that examined six elements of disaster preparedness: disaster plan development, onsite surge capacity, available materials and resources, disaster education and training, disaster preparedness funding levels, and perception of disaster preparedness...

OBJECTIVE: To describe the challenges of service coordination through the National Disaster Medical System (NDMS) for Hurricane Maria evacuees, particularly those on dialysis. DESIGN: Public health report. SETTING: Georgia. REPORT: On November 25, 2017, there were 208 patients evacuated to Georgia in response to Hurricane Maria receiving NDMS support. Most were evacuated from the US Virgin Islands (97 percent) and the remaining from Puerto Rico (3 percent); 73 percent of these patients were on dialysis, all from the US Virgin Islands...

Agency collaboration is an important function in the management of disasters and catastrophes. For effective emergency management, the need for intergovernmental collaboration grows as the scale of the disaster increases. Several researchers have examined the use of social media by emergency management (and other governmental agencies) during large-scale disasters; however, few have examined the use of social media for intergovernmental collaboration. This study explores the use of social media platforms as a means to establish and maintain intergovernmental collaboration for emergency management-related agencies...

Using roof harvested rainwater held in domestic rainwater tanks is a common practice in Australia, particularly in rural areas. This rainwater might become contaminated with ash and other contaminants during or after a bushfire. Current advice from Australian Health Departments can include the recommendation that landholders drain their tanks after a bushfire, which can cause additional distress to landholders who have already been through a traumatic event. This study created artificially contaminated water, spiked with chemicals likely to be associated with bushfires, including chromated copper arsenate-treated timber ash and firefighting foam to determine the possibility of contamination...