Community Disaster Risk Management - Disaster risk literacy
Community Disaster Risk Management including Disaster Risk Literacy and Addressing the Needs of Subpopulations - Disaster risk literacy
Disaster risk management (DRM) involves various forms of policies, interventions, and activities to reduce vulnerability and to increase resiliance and capacity.
One of the DRM measures to mitigate public health impacts of health emergencies integrates the concept of health promotion and health education in DRM. The concept of health education is a widely used risk communication approach to increase knowledge and understanding of their disaster risk in order to enable people at risk to make informed decisions to mitigate the effects of a hazard, e.g. a flooding, and take protective and preventive actions independently [1].
Disaster risk literacy was identified as an important approach to raise public awareness of the health risks and incease for Disaster Risk Management for Communities during the Health EDRM expert meeting in 2018 [2]. Disaster risk literacy is defined as:
‘"the ability of an individual to access, read, understand, and use the information necessary to make informed decisions and follow instructions in the context of mitigation, preparation, response, and recovery during a disaster [3]."
For example:
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Individual level: disaster risk literacy helps to create awareness of the risks associated with a particular disaster, and prepare people to take action to reduce the impacts. It can also help to build individual resilience, by providing people with the skills, knowledge, and resources needed to prepare and respond to disasters.
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Community or organizational level: disaster risk literacy helps to create a culture of safety and resilience. It can help organizations to identify and assess risks, develop plans and strategies to prepare for and respond to disasters, and build resilient communities.
When developing an health education activities for a community to mitigate disaster risk, it involves understanding the factors that contribute to disaster risk, being aware of the potential impact of disasters on individuals and communities, and the local capacity to take appropriate action to reduce risk [4,5]. It is also important to acknoledge stakeholders in communititees, e.g. governments, civil societies [6].
Having a good knowledge and understanding of the hazard risks posed by natural hazards as well as the need to develop effective strategies to reduce the risk of disasters and mitigate their impacts.helps individuals, organisations, and communities to be better prepared for, respond to, and recover from disasters by empowering them to take action for risk reduction, resilience building and mitigating disaster impacts.
References
[1] WHO. Risk communication and community engagement (RCCE). https://www.who.int/emergencies/risk-communications (accessed 1 July 2023).
[2] Kayano R, Chan EY, Murray V, Abrahams J, Barber SL. WHO Thematic Platform for Health Emergency and Disaster Risk Management Research Network (TPRN): Report of the Kobe Expert Meeting. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2019 Apr 6;16(7):1232. doi: 10.3390/ijerph16071232. PMID: 30959880; PMCID: PMC6480684.
[3] Hardworking C, Uner S. Disaster literacy and public health: a systematic review and integration of definitions and models, Disaster Med. Public Health Prep. (2020) 518–527, https://doi.org/10.1017/dmp.2020.100.
[4] Hung, KKC, Yue, J, Kim, JH, et al. Preliminary findings on urban disaster risk literacy and preparedness in a Chinese community. In: 13th World Congress on Public Health, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. 2012:439.
[5] Kimura, R, Hayashi, H, Kobayashi, K, et al. Development of a “disaster management literacy hub” for collecting, creating, and transmitting disaster management content to increase disaster management literacy. J Disaster Res. 2017;12(1):42-56. doi: 10.20965/jdr.2017.p0042.
