Assessing Impacts of Hurricane Maria for Promoting Healthcare Resilience in Puerto Rico
Mozumder, P., Rodriguez-Figueroa, L., Quiles-Miranda, M., Manandhar, B., Meng, S., & Halim N. (2023). Assessing Impacts of Hurricane Maria for Promoting Healthcare Resilience in Puerto Rico. Natural Hazards Center Public Health Disaster Research Report Series, 32. University of Colorado Boulder. https://hazards.colorado.edu/public-health-disaster-research/assessing-impacts-of-hurricane-maria-for-promoting-healthcare-resilience-in-puerto-rico
Given the rising exposure to coastal hazards in highly vulnerable areas like Puerto Rico, there is a growing urge to integrate natural hazards risk into public health preparedness for enhancing community resilience. How healthcare providers, hospital management staff, nonprofit and community organizations, public health practitioners, emergency management personnel, and the public interact in responding to natural hazards is critical for building a resilient healthcare system in affected communities. Against this backdrop, we conducted interviews to gauge the perspectives of patients, public health professionals, and emergency management personnel to gain deeper insights into the nature and extent of key public health management challenges following recent disaster events in Puerto Rico. The main research questions are: (a) to what extent are these key challenges due to resource constraints, (b) to what extent are they due to management practices and policy constraints, and (c) what are the actionable steps that can be specified to overcome these constraints for reducing mortality and morbidity risks during future disasters? The preliminary findings indicate that high mortality and morbidity risks in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico were primarily driven by resource constraints, which were further aggravated by management practices and policy constraints. Our findings have significant implications, as it can potentially help build a conduit between the community, public health stakeholders, and emergency management agencies for laying the foundation of a resilient health system in Puerto Rico.
Analyzing The Effect of Hurricane Irma on Birth Outcomes in Florida
This paper investigates the impact of Hurricane Irma on birth outcomes including low birth weight and preterm birth. In addition to psychological stress, Hurricane Irma may have affected the birth outcome through some other pathways including hurricane Irma-led evacuation of 7 million residents of Florida, knocking out power to 6.7 million utility customers, and damage in residential buildings. Following Currie and Rossin-Slater (2013), we examine whether stress induced by Hurricane Irma is the only casual role of birth outcome, or other aforementioned channels have also contributed to the outcome. We use cross-sectional birth records provided by the Florida Department of Health over the period 2016-2018 to explore the effect of hurricane Irma on birth outcomes through stress, and other related causal mechanisms mentioned earlier. To build the main model, the pregnant women stratified into treatment and control groups. Treatment group includes pregnant women living in the path of the hurricane and control group consists of those living away from the hurricane path. Using difference-in-difference model, we capture the effect of hurricane exposure on the treated group before and after the hurricane. Also, geospatial information of Hurricane Irma such as the hurricane track and the wind speed were obtained from the Florida Division of Emergency Management and FEMA’s HAZUS program. The results suggest that infants born in the path of Hurricane Irma were 6 grams lighter on average compared to infants born outside the hurricane path. The impact of the hurricane is larger in magnitude if pregnant women were exposed to the hurricane in their third trimester. Also, we found no impact of the hurricane exposure on the pregnant women’s behaviors. We report some robustness checks and examine possible causal mechanisms that could contribute to the outcome.
Factors Associated with Escalated Mental Health Issues Following Hurricane Harvey
Hurricane Harvey hit Texas in 2017 and caused unprecedented damage and a devastating impact on thousands of families. The Hurricane’s adverse impact on mental health is substantial and survivors experience prolonged traumatized events. The objective of this study is to understand the correlation between disaster and mental health and encounter the post disaster special psychological symptoms associated with unexplainable disaster stress. Survey responses have been gathered from more than 700 households in Texas living in Hurricane Harvey affected areas. The survey data include information related to respondent’s socio-economic, demographic and mental health information following Hurricane Harvey. In this study, we assessed the mental health exposure and escalated psychological issues to the affected communities after the tragic Hurricane Harvey. We focused on different mental health issues and the key factors that are closely associated with deteriorating mental health following Hurricane Harvey. Our empirical studies reveal that people who had higher monetary damage, did not receive mental counselling when needed also experienced both general and specific mental health issues after Hurricane Harvey. The outcome of this research will shed light on different implications of clinical interventions along with mitigating the disaster shock.
COVID-19 Pandemic Versus Natural Disasters: A Comparative Analysis of Workforce Disruptions
Households living in the Gulf Coast areas have recently suffered from multiple crises, which caused a severe and long-lasting impact on their well-being. While many of them are still recovering from the impact of two consecutive hurricanes (Harvey and Irma) by resuming their jobs or seeking new employment opportunities, COVID-19 hit the entire world and created another round of health and economic shocks. The authors of this study present comparative analyses to understand the extent and distribution of workforce disruptions from a pandemic and a natural disaster based on two hurricane survey datasets. According to the Hurricane Harvey survey of 780 residents in Texas, 24.23% experienced a reduction in income, and among them, only half (50.79%) were able to recover when COVID-19 hit again. The average working hours per week reduced from 21.2 hours before both disasters to 18.6 hours due to the hurricane and 19.9 hours due to the COVID-19. According to the Hurricane Irma survey of 768 residents from Florida, the average working hours reduced from 20.1 hours before both disasters to 18.4 and 18.2 hours due to the hurricane and COVID-19, respectively. Spatial and demographic information of the respondents were also collected in both datasets to identify the most impacted areas and vulnerable groups. This study provided policymakers, disaster management, and public health agencies with reliable information about the distribution of the impact to help inform the relief and recovery efforts.