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Future research should study the intersection of gender and disasters in terms of needs and solutions including who is responsible for implementing solutions.

Conventional wisdom holds that pre-event planning is a key factor in effective disaster response. In assessing the response to the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, it is necessary to evaluate the extent to which emergency management agencies were prepared to respond to a pandemic, particularly given the unusual nature of this event, ie, scope, scale, and length of response. While emergency management agencies at every level of government have been involved in the COVID-19 response, state-level governments have taken on a prominent and atypical leadership role. This study assesses the extent and role that emergency management agencies planned for a pandemic scenario. Understanding the extent to which state-level emergency management agencies planned for an event like the COVID-19 pandemic and what they anticipated their roles to provide insight for future revisions in pandemic planning. This study addresses two related research questions: RQ 1: To what extent did state-level emergency management agencies account for a pandemic in emergency management response plans prior to COVID-19? RQ 2: What was the planned role of state-level emergency management agencies in the response to a pandemic? An analysis of state-level emergency management plans found that, although all states with available emergency management response plans included pandemics, there was significant variation in the extent of the inclusion, and the role prescribed for emergency management. Public health and emergency management response plans were congruent with respect to the planned role of emergency management.

60439. For information about Argonne and its pioneering science and technology programs, see www.anl.gov. DOCUMENT AVAILABILITYOnline Access: U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) reports produced after 1991 and a growing number of pre-1991 documents are available free at OSTI.GOV (http://www.osti.gov/), a service of the US Dept. of Energy's Office of Scientific and Technical Information.

The Emergency Management Performance Grant (EMPG) program has long been a cornerstone of state and local emergency management preparedness efforts. Through the EMPG program, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) administers grants to state and local emergency management agencies to accomplish a wide range of tasks such as the development of response and recovery plans, the creation of emergency operation centers, and the hiring of staff, among other activities required to be effective. EMPG provides the predominant federal funding for this mission, and many agencies depend on these funds for their operations. Despite the importance of EMPG, there is a dearth of empirical research about the program. This study explores this gap by evaluating how EMPG funds were distributed across United States counties from 2014 to 2020. Using FEMA and US Census data, we conducted a county‐level analysis using robust regression statistical analysis to determine factors affecting funding awards. Findings indicate that high population, high diversity, a strong economy, and high risk (measured using both the National Risk Index score and the number of federal disaster declarations per county) increased the likelihood that a county would receive EMPG funds, with high‐risk urban counties rather than rural counties receiving more funding.