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Addressing the Health Care Needs of Displaced Populations Following a Disaster: Development of Clinical Tools and Tracking Methods

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 September 2025

Steven Hirschfeld Open the ORCID record for Steven Hirschfeld [Opens in a new window] ,
Dean Coppola  and
Jeffrey Kopp
Steven Hirschfeld*
Affiliation:
Pediatrics, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences , Bethesda, Maryland, United States
Dean Coppola
Affiliation:
Independent Consultant
Jeffrey Kopp
Affiliation:
NIDDK , Bethesda, Maryland, USA
*
Corresponding author: Steven Hirschfeld; Email: steven.hirschfeld@usuhs.edu
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Abstract

Triage approaches for treating individuals in disaster settings historically have been focused on identifying acute decompensation, injuries, and death. For displaced populations that had limited function prior to ta disaster event, the emphasis during and after a disaster becomes identification of the proper level of support needed to survive in a shelter and selection of an appropriate post-shelter destination. The US Public Health Service Rapid Deployment Force team PHS-1 developed tools to address the needs of such displaced populations. The tools, described in detail in this report, address assessment, tracking, planning, resource utilization, and decision making and were field tested over the course of multiple deployments to refine them and validate their utility.

Keywords

decision makingorganizationaldelivery of health caredisastersnatural disasters

Information

Type
Concepts in Disaster Medicine
Information
Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness , Volume 19 , 2025 , e248
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Society for Disaster Medicine and Public Health, Inc

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