Geriatric Mental Health Disaster and Emergency Preparedness

122 Geriatric Mental Health Disaster and Emergency Preparedness
train-the-trainer model, FEMA offers the curriculum for Community
Emergency Response Team (CERT) training and relies on local communities
for implementation via traditional first responders. Despite a national
effort to provide community preparedness coverage through these
programs, coordinated communication about program training and effectiveness
was only initiated in September 2008 (Community Emergency
Response Team, 2008). While FEMA has acknowledged the need for including
nongovernmental entities, citizens, and communities in emergency
preparedness (i.e., in its National Response Framework, training course
catalog, Citizen Corps, and CERT program), the lack of focused, coordinated,
or integrated training for these groups reflects a gap in existing preparedness
efforts.
Focus on Citizen Preparedness
Kits Rather Than Skills
Emergency preparedness messages for individual citizens in the United
States have focused on concrete actions and checklists. The Department
of Homeland Security’s Ready America Web site lists three steps to preparedness:
1) get a kit, 2) make a plan, and 3) be informed (Department of
Homeland Security, 2008c). Rather than viewing preparedness as an evolving
process (Perry & Lindell, 2003), these messages limit preparedness
activities to household-level kits, emergency plans, and a readiness quotient
quiz. While there is a need for individual-level preparedness, these activities
cannot end with a document or a bag of supplies; training, drills,
and critique must provide the opportunity to develop skills vital to emergency
planning and response (Perry & Lindell). Additionally, the isolation
of individuals from the community in disaster planning ignores the experience
of disaster as a community-level phenomenon (Norris, 2002) and the
importance of social and family networks in emergency response, especially
for vulnerable populations. Without developing skills to accompany a preparedness
kit or emergency plan, and without making links to broader
networks, individual preparedness activities based on existing federal messages
fail to ensure adequate preparedness for safety and response.
Lack of Community-Level Drills
Despite the demonstrated importance of community in disaster response,
emergency response simulation exercises have been targeted to first re-