Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness最新文献

Objective: This study explores how we can improve the government's research and technology for disasters and safety.

Methods: This study employs the Structural Equation Model (SEM) based on 268 experts' perspectives.

Results: R&D performance exerts a directly significant impact on R&D achievement with the coefficient of 0.429. Second, while professionality and environment of R&D do not show a direct effect on achievement, they exhibit an indirect effect on it with the coefficient of 1.124 and 0.354, respectively. Third, R&D professionality exerts a significant impact on the R&D environment (0.964), and R&D environment has a positive effect on R&D performance (0.827).

Conclusion: Governments and policymakers should develop disaster and safety policies by understanding direct and indirect effects and the relationship of factors related to R&D for improving R&D achievement.

Objective: To evaluate the perception of disaster preparedness and response self-efficacy of nurses living and working in the region affected by the earthquakes in Turkey on February 6, 2023.

Methods: This cross-sectional, relationship-seeking research was conducted between March 10 and May 10, 2024 with 344 nurses in a hospital in the province of Kahramanmaraş, which was the epicentre of the February 2023 earthquake. A Personal Information Form, the Perception of Nurses of Disaster Preparedness Scale (PNDPS), and the Disaster Response Self-Efficacy Scale (DRSES) were used in data collection. Pathway analysis and confirmatory factor analyis were used in the evaluation of the data.

Results: Age, gender, educational level, disaster training, and having lost someone close in a disaster were determined to have a significant effect on the perception of disaster preparedness, and response self-efficacy (P < 0.05). The perception of the stage of preparation was determined to be 0.136-fold greater in those with a disaster preparation plan (P < 0.05). Perception of the post-disaster stage was determined to be 0.130-fold greaater in those with a disaster preparation plan (P < 0.05).

Conclusions: This study demonstrated that nurses working in the earthquake region had high levels of disaster preparedness perception and response self-efficacy.

The aim of the study is to examine the avalanche events that occurred in Erzurum Palandöken Ski Resort. Palandöken's topography makes it vulnerable to avalanches. Avalanches are the rapid and sudden flow of snow masses accumulated on slopes and are considered one of the natural disasters. Several avalanches have occurred on Palandöken Mountain, leading to tragic results. In 1974, six people were buried under an avalanche and rescue teams were injured in a secondary avalanche. In subsequent years, avalanches died four people in 1975, one person in 1976, and eight people on Dragon Peak in 1977. In 2006, one tourist died in an avalanche on Palandöken Mountain. The last avalanche disaster on Palandöken Mountain, which occurred on December 21, 2024, resulted in the death of an athlete from the Kocaeli Judo National Team of the Turkish Olympic Preparation Center. Palandöken, one of Türkiye's leading winter tourism destinations, hosts international events but faces significant avalanche risks due to its topography. In order to reduce these risks, it is essential to establish avalanche early warning and monitoring systems, provide avalanche safety training for tourists and personnel, and implement infrastructure measures to reduce avalanche hazards.

The reprocessing of personal protective equipment that is only intended for single use has been brought into focus by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic, especially regarding respiratory masks.^1-4.

Objectives: Plastics in the environment have moved from an "eye-sore" to a public health threat. Hospitals are one of the biggest users of single-use plastics, and there is growing literature looking at not only plastics in the environment but health care's overall contribution to its growth.

Methods: This study was a retrospective review at a 411-bed level II trauma hospital over 47 months pre and post the last wave of COVID-19 affecting this hospital. Deidentified data were gathered: daily census in the emergency department, hospital census, and corresponding number of admitted COVID-19 patients. Additionally, for the same time frame, personal protective equipment (PPE) supply purchases and gross tonnage of nonhazardous refuse were obtained.

Results: There was a large increase in PPE purchased without a significant change in gross tonnage of weight of trash.

Conclusions: PPE is incredibly important to protect health care workers. However, single-use plastic is not sustainable for the environment or public health. Understanding the full effect of the pandemic on hospital waste production is critically important as health care institutions focus on strategies to decrease their carbon footprint and increase positive impacts on public health and the environment.

Objective: Disasters often have long-lasting effects on the mental health of people affected by them. This study aimed to examine the trajectories and predictors of mental health in people affected by disasters according to their income level.

Method: This study used data from the "Long-Term Survey on the Change of Life of Disaster Victim" conducted by the National Disaster Management Research Institute. Latent growth curve modeling and multigroup analysis were employed on 699 participants.

Results: Individuals in the low-income class had a higher post-traumatic stress (PTS) intercept than those in the middle-high-income class. The PTS intercept was increased by unmet health care needs and financial hardship caused by disasters and was decreased by health care support. Social support, which was low in the low-income class, did not affect their PTS level; however, it lowered the PTS intercept in the middle-high-income class.

Conclusions: These results suggest that it is important to address the mental health of disaster survivors by providing sufficient disaster relief services and compensation to ensure that disasters do not further exacerbate social inequalities. It is also crucial to provide emotional, informational, and material support using local community resources for those who have less or no access to in-person social networks.

Objectives: Disasters pose serious threats to people's health, including reproductive health (RH); therefore, we conducted this study to investigate Iranian women's post-disaster RH challenges.

Methods: This study was conducted as a systematic review, and all published articles until the end of May 2022 were selected by searching in international and domestic scientific databases, including Web of Science, PubMed, Scopus, and Google Scholar, SID, and Magiran. The quality assessment of the studies was done using the Strobe checklist. We conducted this research based on PRISMA guidelines and analyzed the content by qualitative content analysis method.

Results: Twelve related articles were included (8 high quality and 4 medium quality). Based on these articles, factors affecting post-disaster Iranian women's RH were divided into 2 categories: individual factors (physical injuries, psychological disorders, cultural and religious issues) and management factors (not prioritizing RH services in disasters, lack of supplies, suitable facilities and professional human resources, access limitation to RH care and services).

Conclusions: We must enhance post disaster RH status by adopting suitable policies and decision-making in disaster risk management. We should prioritize RH services during the disaster response phase, providing facilities, equipment, and specialized and trained human resources.

Objective: Evacuation can reduce morbidity and mortality by ensuring households are safely out of the path of, and ensuing impacts from, a disaster. Our goal was to characterize potential evacuation behaviors among a nationally representative sample.

Methods: We added 10 questions to the existing Porter Novelli's (PN) ConsumerStyles surveys in Fall 2020, Spring 2021, and Fall 2021.We conducted a weighted analysis using SAS 9.4 to examine distributions and estimate associations of potential evacuation behaviors of each survey separately.

Results: When asked about barriers to evacuation if public authorities announced a mandatory evacuation because of a large-scale disaster, ~7% reported nothing would prevent them from evacuating. Over half of respondents across the 3 surveys (51.1%-52.4%) had no preparedness plans, and almost two-thirds of respondents (63.7%-66.2%) did not have an emergency supply kit.

Conclusions: Knowing potential evacuation behaviors can help frame messages and provide a starting point for interventions to improve disaster preparedness and response. Overall, data show that there is much work to be done regarding evacuation behaviors and overall preparedness in the United States. These data can be used to tailor public messaging and work with partners to increase knowledge about evacuation.

Objective: In the course of the EU funded Pandemic Preparedness and Response (PANDEM-2) project, a functional exercise (FX) was conducted to train the coordinated response to a large-scale pandemic event in Europe by using new IT solutions developed by the project. This report provides an overview of the steps involved in planning, conducting, and evaluating the FX.

Methods: The FX design was based on the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) simulation exercise cycle for public health settings and was carried out over 2 days in the German and Dutch national public health institutes (PHI), with support from other consortium PHIs. The planning team devised an inject list based on a scenario script describing the emergence of an influenza pandemic from a novel H5N1 pathogen.

Results: The multi-disciplinary participant teams included 11 Dutch and 6 German participants. The FX was supported by 9 international project partners from 8 countries. Overall, participants and observers agreed that the FX goals were achieved.

Conclusions: The FX was a suitable format to test the PANDEM-2 solutions in 2 different country set-ups. It demonstrated the benefit of regular simulation exercises at member state level to test and practice public health emergency responses to be better prepared for real-life events.