Who Glossary For Health Emergency And Disaster Risk Management

A Dictionary of Disaster Management offers over 200 terms covering different disasters from a social science perspective, brining together insights from many different disciplines including sociology, political science, history, anthropology, and natural science. It also features practical terms, key concepts in disaster research, and important organizations involved in disaster management. Terms include famine, disaster diplomacy, gender intersectionality, and humanitarian principles allowing readers to access definitions on the most important topics within this developing field. Illustrations and web links offer additional context and resources. This work focuses on the practical managerial dimension of disaster management as well as research approaches and methods and covers terms that a student in an intermediate or advanced course on disaster management will need to understand. This is an essential reference source for students and professionals in this area.

Disasters such as earthquakes, cyclones, floods, heat waves, nuclear accidents, and large scale pollution incidents take lives and cause exceptionally large health problems. The majority of large-scale disasters affect the most vulnerable populations, which are often comprised of people of extreme ages, in remote living areas, with endemic poverty, and with low literacy. Health-related emergency disaster risk management (Health-EDRM) [1] refers to the systematic analysis and management of health risks surrounding emergencies and disasters; it plays an important role in reducing hazards and vulnerability along with extending preparedness, response, and recovery measures. This concept encompasses risk analyses and interventions, such as accessible early warning systems, timely deployment of relief workers, and the provision of suitable drugs and medical equipment, to decrease the impact of disaster on people before, during, and after disaster events. Disaster risk profiling and interventions can be at the personal/household, community, and system/political levels; they can be targeted at specific health risks including respiratory issues caused by indoor burning, re-emergence of infectious disease due to low vaccination coverage, and gastrointestinal problems resulting from unregulated waste management. Unfortunately, there has been a major gap in the scientific literature regarding Health-EDRM. The aim of this Special Issue of IJERPH was to present papers describing/reporting the latest disaster and health risk analyses, as well as interventions for health-related disaster risk management, in an effort to address this gap and facilitate major global policies and initiatives for disaster risk reduction.

This book presents the health emergency and disaster risk management (H-EDRM) research landscape, with examples from Asia. In recent years, the intersection of health and disaster risk reduction (DRR) has emerged as an important interdisciplinary field. In several landmark UN agreements adopted in 2015–2016, including the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030, the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the Paris climate agreement, and the New Urban Agenda (Habitat III), health is acknowledged as an inevitable outcome and a natural goal of disaster risk reduction, and the cross-over of the two fields is essential for the successful implementation of the Sendai Framework. H-EDRM has emerged as an umbrella field that encompasses emergency and disaster medicine, DRR, humanitarian response, community health resilience, and health system resilience. However, this fragmented, nascent field has yet to be developed into a coherent discipline. Key challenges include redundant research, lack of a strategic research agenda, limited development of multisectoral and interdisciplinary approaches, deficiencies in the science–policy–practice nexus, absence of standardized terminology, and insufficient coordination among stakeholders. This book provides a timely and invaluable resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students, researchers, scholars, and frontline practitioners as well as policymakers from across the component domains of H-EDRM.

This handbook is developed with the aim of supporting healthcare facilities to minimize disruption and ultimately increase the resilience of health services during public health emergencies. It supports the development of service continuity plans in PHE context by outlining the procedures and key elements to be considered for planning including a planning template. By nature, the utility of this handbook is not specific to a specific emergency response. It underpins a preparedness and proactive approach towards managing various public health emergency risks for which the health services should be prepared before they occur or disrupt health services. The intended audiences for this interim handbook are health facilities and services managers, health workers and health authorities with responsibilities to plan and coordinate emergency management and service continuity operations among health facilities. These users can apply this handbook in: - enhancing awareness on the necessity of service continuity planning and the associated requirements; - reviewing and updating their existing service continuity plans and other arrangements for health services continuity; - developing service continuity plans if there are none for their health facilities. This interim version will be updated as required based on lessons from its application in countries.

The complex challenges highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic and other major health emergencies emphasize the need to rethink our approach to surveillance, while building upon the momentum of substantive investments in public health capacity in recent years. At the 75th World Health Assembly in May 2022, WHO set out a harmonizing framework to strengthen the global architecture for health emergency preparedness, response, and resilience (HEPR). Under the proposed global architecture, the ability to effectively prevent, prepare for, detect, respond to, and recover from health emergencies at subnational, national, regional and global levels depend on the operational readiness and capacities in five interconnected systems: collaborative surveillance, community protection, safe and scalable clinical care, access to countermeasures, and emergency coordination. This document defines the collaborative surveillance concept—proposing a conceptual model, dimensions across which collaboration should occur to enable multi-source and multisectoral surveillance, key objectives and concrete capabilities for how countries, with the support of WHO and partners, can further advance surveillance capabilities, and address fragmented and insufficient capacity. The collaborative surveillance concept was developed to support all stakeholders working on surveillance.