Emergency preparedness becomes more important with increased age, as older adults are at heightened risk for harm from disasters. In this study, predictors of preparedness actions and confidence in preparedness among older adults in the United States were assessed.

This nationally representative survey polled community-dwelling older adults ages 50-80 y (n = 2256) about emergency preparedness and confidence in addressing different types of emergencies. Logistic regression was used to identify predictors of reported emergency preparedness actions and confidence in addressing emergencies.

Participants’ mean age was 62.4 y (SD = 8); 52% were female, and 71% were non-Hispanic white. Living alone was associated with lower odds of having a 7-d supply of food and water (adjusted odds ratio [aOR] = 0.74; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.56-0.96), a stocked emergency kit (aOR = 0.64; 95% CI: 0.47-0.86), and having had conversations with family or friends about evacuation plans (aOR = 0.59; 95% CI: 0.44-0.78). Use of equipment requiring electricity was associated with less confidence in addressing a power outage lasting more than 24 h (aOR = 0.66; 95% CI: 0.47-0.94), as was use of mobility aids (OR = 0.65; 95% CI: 0.45-0.93).

These results point to the need for tailored interventions to support emergency preparedness for older adults, particularly among those who live alone and use medical equipment requiring electricity.

As an emerging infectious disease, COVID-19 has involved many countries and regions. With the further development of the epidemic, the proportion of clusters has increased.

In our study, we collected information on COVID-19 clusters in Qingdao City. The epidemiological characteristics and clinical manifestations were analyzed.

Eleven clusters of COVID-19 were reported in Qingdao City between January 29, and February 23, 2020, involving 44 confirmed cases, which accounted for 73.33% of all confirmed cases. From January 19 to February 2, 2020, the cases mainly concentrated in the district that had many designated hospitals. Patients aged 20-59 y old accounted for the largest proportion (68.18%) of cases; the male-to-female sex ratio was 0.52:1. Three cases were infected from exposure to confirmed cases. The average incubation period was 6.28 d. The median number of cases per cluster was 4, and the median duration time was 6 d. The median cumulative number of exposed persons was 53.

More attention should be paid to the epidemic of clusters in prevention and control of COVID-19. In addition to isolating patients, it is essential to track, screen, and isolate those who have come in close contact with patients. Self-isolation is the key especially for healthy people in the epidemic area.

The focus of this study is to monitor the effect of lockdown on the various air pollutants due to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic and identify the ones that affect COVID-19 fatalities so that measures to control the pollution could be enforced.

Various machine learning techniques: Decision Trees, Linear Regression, and Random Forest have been applied to correlate air pollutants and COVID-19 fatalities in Delhi. Furthermore, a comparison between the concentration of various air pollutants and the air quality index during the lockdown period and last two years, 2018 and 2019, has been presented.

From the experimental work, it has been observed that the pollutants ozone and toluene have increased during the lockdown period. It has also been deduced that the pollutants that may impact the mortalities due to COVID-19 are ozone, NH3, NO2, and PM10.

The novel coronavirus has led to environmental restoration due to lockdown. However, there is a need to impose measures to control ozone pollution, as there has been a significant increase in its concentration and it also impacts the COVID-19 mortality rate.

This study examines the factors associated with the willingness to get the coronavirus vaccine among individuals aged 18 and above.

This cross-sectional study was conducted in Turkey. The participants aged 18 and older were recruited between December, 2020 and January, 2021 through conventional social media sites. Snowball sampling was used. An anonymous questionnaire consisted of demographics, vaccination experiences, and perceived risk of coronavirus disease.

1202 women and 651 men were included in the data analysis. Findings showed that demographics, vaccination experience, and perceived risk of getting COVID-19 were explained. 37% of the variance in people’s willingness to get the COVID-19 vaccination was according to hierarchical logistic regression. Furthermore, increasing age, being male, acquiring positive information about COVID-19 vaccines, having a lower level of vaccine hesitancy, the high level of worry about COVID-19, and low level of perceptions of the possibility of becoming infected by the COVID-19 were the main predictors of COVID-19 vaccine willingness.

Factors affecting adults’ willingness to be inoculated with COVID-19 vaccines were related to demographics, vaccination experiences, and perceived risk of getting COVID-19. We recommend that public health authorities and practitioners should consider these multiple factors regarding vaccine confidence to achieve herd immunity.

March 2020 was a pivotal month for the worldwide geographic and numeric expansion of the first wave of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). We examined the major storylines that depicted this explosive spread of COVID-19 around the globe.

A detailed review of World Health Organization (WHO) situation reports, surveillance summaries, and online resources allowed us to quantify the increases in cases and deaths by region and by country throughout the month of March 2020.

During March, COVID-19 was officially declared by the WHO to be a pandemic. COVID-19 emerged from a focalized outbreak in the Western Pacific Region and rapidly proliferated across all continents worldwide. Globally, cumulative numbers of confirmed cases increased by a factor of nine throughout the month. During the entire month, cases rose exponentially throughout Europe. Starting in mid-March, confirmed cases accelerated coast-to-coast throughout the United States and, on March 26, the United States surpassed all other nations to rank first in numbers of cases. COVID-19 mortality lagged several weeks behind but by month’s end, death tolls were also rising exponentially.

March 2020 was a consequential month when the COVID-19 pandemic wrapped completely around the planet, with outbreaks erupting in most nations worldwide.

Community health workers (CHWs) in disaster-affected areas are at risk for emotional distress, as they support others while they may be in the process of rebuilding their own lives. The Resilience and Coping for the Healthcare Community (RCHC) intervention was developed in response to the stress CHWs faced after Hurricane Sandy. The intervention uses psychoeducation to help participants identify common stress responses, recognize signs of job burnout, and utilize healthy coping strategies.

A mixed-methods pilot of the RCHC intervention was conducted in 2013 with a convenience sample of staff from 6 federally qualified health centers (n=69). Validated measures of stress, coping, compassion fatigue and satisfaction, burnout, stress, and social provisions and a measure of perceived knowledge were administered at baseline, after the workshop, and at a 3-week follow-up. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 10 randomly selected participants and were analyzed by using content analysis.

From baseline to the post-workshop assessment, perceived knowledge scores increased from 24.59 to 30.34, t(62)=5.16 (P<0.001), and acute stress scores decreased significantly from 10.53 to 6.78, t(64)=4.74 (P<0.001). Significant increases from baseline to the 3-week follow-up (n=45) were found for perceived knowledge (24.05 to 27.24; t(40)=5.37; P<0.001), and social provisions (27.34 to 28.39; t(44)=2.15; P<0.05).

Our qualitative findings indicated that the respondents valued learning about common stress responses and incorporating coping as part of a daily routine. Team building and normalization of emotions were seen as ancillary benefits that would reduce stress levels in the workplace. In conclusion, the RCHC intervention shows promise and should be investigated further in experimental studies. (Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness. 2016;page 1 of 8)

This article conceptualized emergency preparedness as a complex, multidimensional construct and empirically examined an array of sociodemographic, motivation, and barrier variables as predictors of levels of emergency preparedness.

The authors used the 2010 wave of the Health and Retirement Study’s emergency preparedness module to focus on persons 50 years old and older in the United States by use of logistic regression models and reconsidered a previous analysis.

The models demonstrated 3 key findings: (1) a lack of preparedness is widespread across virtually all sociodemographic variables and regions of the country; (2) an authoritative voice, in the role of health care personnel, was a strong predictor of preparedness; and (3) previous experience in helping others in a disaster predisposes individuals to be better prepared. Analyses also suggest the need for caution in creating simple summative indexes and the need for further research into appropriate measures of preparedness.

This population of older persons was generally not well prepared for emergencies, and this lack of preparedness was widespread across social, demographic, and economic groups in the United States. Findings with implications for policy and outreach include the importance of health care providers discussing preparedness and the use of experienced peers for outreach. (Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness. 2017;11:80–89)

To examine patterns and predictors of primary mental health care service use following 2 major Australian natural disaster events.

Utilizing data from a national minimum dataset, descriptive and regression analyses were conducted to identify levels and predictors of the use of the Access to Allied Psychological Services (ATAPS) program over a 2-year period following 2 major Australian bushfire and flood/cyclone disasters.

The bushfire disaster resulted in significantly greater and more enduring ATAPS service volume, while service delivery for both disasters peaked in the third quarter. Consumers affected by bushfires (IRR 1.51, 95% CI 1.20–1.89), diagnosed with depression (IRR 2.57, 95% CI 1.60-4.14), anxiety (IRR 2.06, 95% CI 1.21-3.49), or both disorders (IRR 2.15, 95% CI 1.35-3.42) utilized treatment at higher rates.

The substantial demand for primary mental health care services following major natural disasters can vary in magnitude and trajectory with disaster type. Disaster-specific ATAPS services provide a promising model to cater for this demand in primary care settings. Disaster type and need-based variables as drivers of ATAPS use intensity indicate an equitable level of service use in line with the program intention. Established service usage patterns can assist with estimating capacity requirements in similar disaster circumstances. (Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness. 2015;9:275-282)

Physical disease patients are known to experience high levels of psychological distress. This study examined the association between the medical treatment of physical diseases and psychological distress in the coastal area affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake.

Using cross-sectional data, we studied 3032 individuals aged ≥40 years who lived in Shichigahama, Miyagi, Japan. We examined the associations between 8 medical treatments for physical diseases and psychological distress, defined as Kessler Psychological Distress scale score ≥13 of 24 points. To investigate the associations, we performed multiple logistic regression analyses.

There were statistically significant associations between psychological distress and medical treatments for myocardial infarction/angina pectoris (odds ratio [OR]=1.8, 95% confidence interval [CI]=1.0-3.0) and liver disease (OR=3.1, 95% CI=1.0-7.7). The other 4 medical treatments for physical diseases had ORs of 1.3 or higher and were positively associated with psychological distress: cancer, hyperlipidemia, kidney disease, and diabetes mellitus. The degree of damage to homes did not affect the association between most of the medical treatments for physical diseases and psychological distress.

In the disaster area, most of the medical treatments for physical diseases had positive associations with psychological distress, irrespective of the degree of damage to homes. (Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness. 2015;9:374–381)

Response to the unprecedented coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak needs to be augmented in Texas, United States, where the first 5 cases were reported on March 6, 2020, and were rapidly followed by an exponential rise within the next few weeks. This study aimed to determine the ongoing trend and upcoming infection status of COVID-19 in county levels of Texas.

Data were extracted from the following sources: published literature, surveillance, unpublished reports, and websites of Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS), Natality report of Texas, and WHO Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Dashboard. The 4-compartment Susceptible-Exposed-Infectious-Removal (SEIR) mathematical model was used to estimate the current trend and future prediction of basic reproduction number and infection cases in Texas. Because the basic reproduction number is not sufficient to predict the outbreak, we applied the Continuous-Time Markov Chain (CTMC) model to calculate the probability of the COVID-19 outbreak.

The estimated mean basic reproduction number of COVID-19 in Texas is predicted to be 2.65 by January 31, 2021. Our model indicated that the third wave might occur at the beginning of May 2021, which will peak at the end of June 2021. This prediction may come true if the current spreading situation/level persists, i.e., no clinically effective vaccine is available, or this vaccination program fails for some reason in this area.

Our analysis indicates an alarming ongoing and upcoming infection rate of COVID-19 at county levels in Texas, thereby emphasizing the promotion of more coordinated and disciplined actions by policy-makers and the population to contain its devastating impact.

We identify characteristics of local health departments, which enhance collaborations with community- and faith-based organizations (CFBOs) for emergency preparedness and response.

Online survey data were collected from a sample of 273 disaster preparedness coordinators working at local health departments across the United States between August and December 2011.

Using multiple linear regression models, we found that perceptions of CFBO trust were associated with more successful partnership planning (β=0.63; P=0.02) and capacity building (β=0.61; P=0.01). Employee layoffs in the past 3 years (β=0.41; P=0.001) and urban location (β=0.41; P=0.005) were positively associated with higher ratings of resource sharing between health agencies and CFBOs. Having 1-3 full-time employees increased the ratings of success in communication and outreach activities compared with health departments having less than 1 full-time employee (β=0.33; P=0.05). Positive attitudes toward CFBOs also enhanced communication and outreach (β=0.16; P=0.03).

Staff-capacity factors are important for quick dissemination of information and resources needed to address emerging threats. Building the trust of CFBOs can help address large-scale disasters by improving the success of more involved activities that integrate the CFBO into emergency plans and operations of the health department and that better align with federal-funding performance measures. (Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness. 2018;12:57–66)