Abstract

Personal emergency preparedness efforts that increase the resiliency of individuals and communities and decrease the risk for poor outcomes after an emergency are increasingly of interest to health care leaders, policy makers, and governmental entities. The limited capacity for external aid to provide relief in the first 72 hours after an emergency dictates that individuals and communities become prepared to sustain themselves for this initial period. Failure to prepare for an emergency can result in a multitude of negative outcomes. Those who are economically vulnerable are particularly at risk, including a high risk for negative health outcomes. An initial review the literature on chronic diseases, specifically diabetes, provided a better understanding of how emergencies can impact the health of a diabetic. Analyzing the concept of risk facilitates an understanding of the concept that is useful to health care, nursing, and emergency preparedness professionals. Lastly, analyzing the effectiveness of emergency preparedness education to determine whether it impacted preparedness behaviors and the participants' perceptions of the education itself provides insight into the effectiveness of the education and into the experience this population had in becoming more prepared. It was determined that participants were significantly more prepared for an emergency after the educational program (M = 17.2, SE = .98) than before the educational program (M = 11.68, SE = .55), t(41) = -4.28, p < .001, ES r = .56. However, further research must be done to find better ways to measure individual preparedness levels and evidence-based methods of teaching it.

Date of publication

Spring 5-16-2014

Document Type

Dissertation

Language

english

Persistent identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/10950/203

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