Despite the regular occurrence of natural disasters such as hurricanes, earthquakes and tornadoes, our knowledge of the determinants of long term resilience and recovery has been thin. Research on large scale disasters has suffered from three problems?a lack of pre-disaster data, the short term focus of most studies that end soon after the initial impact, and a focus on the recovery of the place where the disaster occurred, rather than on the recovery of the people who experienced the disaster; wherever they may be. Research Project (RP) 1, Resilience of Survivors in Hurricane Katrina (RISK) is a longitudinal study focused on a vulnerable population of 1,019 predominately female, African American poor people in New Orleans. Respondents were part of a study of community college students that began a year before Hurricane Katrina. During the initial study phase, we collected two waves of pre-disaster data on physical and mental health, social support, social trust, socioeconomic status and geo-coded neighborhood indicators. With support from NSF and NIH after Katrina, we have relocated 86% of the original participants across 31 different states, and have surveyed them in 2006 and again in 2009-2010. Our overall aim in this proposed project is to understand the mechanisms by which disasters affect the mental and physical health of vulnerable populations, and their social and economic recovery over the long-term. In partnership with the other major Katrina cohorts and studies being conducted as part of the Katrina@10 Program, we will collect another round of phone surveys of our cohort, as well as in depth qualitative interviews of a subset of 60 respondents a decade after the disaster.
Specific aims for RP1 (RISK) are to: (1) Study the dynamics and determinants of long-term trajectories of social, economic and health status of the study participants, and relate these to pre-hurricane resources, experiences of loss and trauma during the hurricane, and post-hurricane disaster relief assistance. (2) Pursue joint analyses with the other two cohort studies (RP2 and RP3) to contrast recovery trajectories, and use the population based findings of RP5 and RP6 to contextualize the findings from the longitudinal studies. And (3) Study the dynamics and determinants of post-disaster mobility trajectories of the study participants using geocoded data. This project will advance research on how best to promote resiliency and recovery among disaster victims. It provides an extremely rare opportunity to study long term outcomes among a vulnerable population with prospectively collected pre-disaster data, and it will contribute to the development and testing of a socio-ecological framework that can inform disaster recovery policy.
This project will advance research on how best to promote resiliency and recovery among disaster victims. It provides an extremely rare opportunity to study long term outcomes among a vulnerable population with prospectively collected pre-disaster data, and it will contribute to the development and testing of a socio-ecological framework that can inform disaster recovery policy.
| Morris, Katherine Ann; Deterding, Nicole M (2016) The emotional cost of distance: Geographic social network dispersion and post-traumatic stress among survivors of Hurricane Katrina. Soc Sci Med 165:56-65 |
| Fussell, Elizabeth; Harris, Elizabeth (2014) Homeownership and Housing Displacement after Hurricane Katrina among Low-Income African-American Mothers in New Orleans. Soc Sci Q 95:1086-1100 |
