While the All‐Hazards approach has been a fixture in disaster management in the United States for approximately three decades, discussion continues regarding the appropriateness of including public health emergencies under the All‐Hazards umbrella. Drawing on the disaster and public health literatures, we examine previous research in three areas of relevance to these events: convergence, risk and crisis communication, and providing medical services. Although events often include characteristics unique to each particular hazard, the literature demonstrates that there are sufficient similarities in these areas to advocate for the continued utility of the All‐Hazards approach. Convergence of people, material, and information often follow both disasters and public health emergencies, and present similar challenges and opportunities as a result. Crisis risk communication for these events rests on similar underlying theories, and presents similar challenges for practitioners, imposing similar demands on the medical system, both increasing needs for medical services and compromising the system's ability to provide services to meet those needs. Research is needed to explore further parallels between hazards, particularly in mitigation and recovery and in other national contexts. Future work should include direct, empirical comparisons across event types, and include other kinds of environmental or public health hazards.

Disasters are among the crises that can test the decision making skill of elected and appointed public officials from planning through response and recovery. The COVID-19 crisis, a public health emergency rather than one with immediate damage to the built environment, has affected many aspects of community life. Experiences in responding to the pandemic will likely stimulate fresh planning initiatives for public health emergencies. How then should emergency planners approach planning and response tasks? The All-Hazards approach has been a mainstay of both research and policymaking for over 40 years, but it has come under recent criticism. In this paper, we consider if the All-Hazards approach to disaster management is still viable. Comparing the management needs that emerged in the pandemic with those of disasters from more familiar hazard agents, we conclude that the All-Hazards approach is valid and can continue to guide policymakers in their hazard and disaster management activities.

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The Disaster Research Center (DRC) was founded in 1963 to help American government decision makers understand how citizens would respond in times of crisis. Since then, DRC personnel have embarked upon some 700 quick-response deployments to better understand the social and physical aspects of disaster mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery. This research has taken DRC faculty and students around the world, from New York City, conducting research that explored and documented the city’s response to and recovery from 9/11, to the Kathmandu Valley to better understand mothering during disaster evacuation after the 2015 Nepal Earthquake. Relevant to the academy, practitioners, and the public, DRC is available to lend its expertise to answer the most pressing questions in disaster science.