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Quantifying Disaster Impacts on Local Public Health Agency’s Leadership, Staffing, and Provision of Essential Public Health Services

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 August 2021

Lauren A. Clay Open the ORCID record for Lauren A. Clay [Opens in a new window] ,
Kahler W. Stone Open the ORCID record for Kahler W. Stone [Opens in a new window]  and
Jennifer A. Horney Open the ORCID record for Jennifer A. Horney [Opens in a new window]
Lauren A. Clay
Affiliation:
Department of Health Administration and Public Health, D’Youville College, Buffalo, NY, USA
Kahler W. Stone
Affiliation:
Department of Health and Human Performance, Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, TN, USA
Jennifer A. Horney*
Affiliation:
Department of Epidemiology, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA
*
Corresponding author: Jennifer A. Horney, Email: horney@udel.edu.
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Abstract

Objective:

The objective of this study is to assess the impact that natural disaster response has on local health departments’ (LHD) ability to continue to provide essential public health services.

Methods:

A web-based survey was sent to all North Carolina Local Health Directors. The survey asked respondents to report on LHD functioning following Hurricanes Florence (2018) and Dorian (2019).

Results:

After Hurricane Florence, the positions who most frequently had regular duties postponed or interrupted were leadership (15 of 48; 31.3%), and professional staff (e.g., nursing and epidemiology: 11 of 48; 22.9%). Staffing shelters for all phases – from disaster response through long-term recovery – was identified as a burden by LHDs, particularly for nursing staff. Approximately 66.6% of LHD jurisdictions opened an Emergency Operations Center (EOC) or activated Incident Command System in response to both hurricanes. If an EOC was activated, the LHD was statistically, significantly more likely to report that normal duties had been interrupted across every domain assessed.

Conclusions:

The ability of LHDs to perform regular activities and provide essential public health services is impacted by their obligations to support disaster response. Better metrics are needed to measure the impacts to estimate indirect public health impacts of disasters.

Keywords

local public healthessential servicesnatural disaster
Type
Original Research
Information
Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness , Volume 16 , Issue 4 , August 2022 , pp. 1552 - 1557
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Society for Disaster Medicine and Public Health, Inc.

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