Of Earthquakes and Epidemics: Examining the Applicability of the All‐Hazards Approach in Public Health Emergencies

Abstract

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.

Evaluating Crisis Communication. A 30-item Checklist for Assessing Performance during COVID-19 and Other Pandemics

“…Similar to nonpublic health crises, public leaders such as presidents and prime ministers have the task of communicating the broader impact of a crisis to citizens, media, and other stakeholders (Jong, Dückers, & van der Velden, 2016). They play a crucial role in all phases of a crisis, from response to mitigation and recovery (Lwin, Lu, Sheldenkar, & Schulz, 2018;Penta, Marlowe, Gill, & Kendra, 2017). In terms of communication, public leaders should be prepared to be exposed to searching questions (Wu et al, 2020) and actively cooperate with their communication professionals (Boin et al, 2013).…”

A disaster by any other name?: COVID‐19 and support for an All‐Hazards approach

“…We refined our list of propositions from this emerging list by considering them in light of the other two criteria. Second, similar to the selection approach we used in our previous work (Penta et al, 2017), we selected propositions relevant to topics that had been well explored in the disaster research literature. The purpose of this criterion was to ensure that there was a sufficient body of scientific work on which to make comparisons with the current pandemic.…”

Clinical Management of Patients Infected with Highly Pathogenic Microorganisms

“…Risk communication should also include reference to actions that were taken to preserve their health and safety, such as preventive measures (physical protection, isolation facilities, infection control means, or preventive medications). Communicating messages during an HCID event must be based on relaying accurate and trustworthy information, conveyed calmly to avoid the creation of confusion and panic, and respectfully regarding the diversity prevailing among the population, including persons with special needs [65,99]. Both the medical teams and the public need to be updated continually concerning the HCID event, its development, and potential consequences, as a dynamic process, transparently and credibly [98,100].…”

“…Risk assessment is vital for both planning and response phases to facilitate decision making and implementation of effective interventions [98,109]. As the health caregivers may be at risk of being infected, either primarily by the HCID agent or from secondary transmission of the pathogen by the patients they treat, each hospital must have the capacity to identify the risk, assess its potential damage, and implement measures to reduce the risk and ensure the safety of its manpower [99].…”