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Community Vulnerabilities and Wellbeing after Disaster

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The Intersection of Trauma and Disaster Behavioral Health

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Abstract

Environmental factors affect recovery at both the individual and community level after a catastrophic disaster. In this chapter, we present an innovative index of community wellbeing based on analyses of archival data at the census tract level to quantify the human impact of the 2016 flooding for residents of three parishes (counties) in south Louisiana. An ecological systems perspective drawn from the disaster research literature is reviewed briefly to provide a context for addressing the psychosocial consequences of environmental flooding and property loss. We describe the core elements of the index of community wellbeing: community stress, economic health, environmental health (built and natural environments), and public health and safety. Implications of these data for policy strategies to lessen behavioral health challenges and mitigate adversity after disaster are discussed.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the Gulf Research Program of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (under award number 2000008299). This support is gratefully acknowledged.

Correspondence concerning this chapter should be addressed to Aimee Moles, Social Research and Evaluation Center, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803-5501 (e-mail: amoles@lsu.2edu).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Social Research and Evaluation Center, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, USA

    Aimee Moles

  2. LSU School of Architecture, Coastal Sustainability Studio, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, USA

    Traci Birch

  3. Department of Geography and Anthropology, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, USA

    Yi Ling Chan & Haojie Zhu

  4. Korea National Institute of Forest Science, Seoul, South Korea

    Dahyung Yang

  5. Department of Psychology, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, USA

    Katie E. Cherry

Authors
  1. Aimee Moles
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  2. Traci Birch
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  3. Yi Ling Chan
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  4. Dahyung Yang
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  5. Haojie Zhu
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  6. Katie E. Cherry
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Correspondence to Aimee Moles .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, USA

    Katie E. Cherry

  2. College of Social Work, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, USA

    Allison Gibson

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Moles, A., Birch, T., Chan, Y.L., Yang, D., Zhu, H., Cherry, K.E. (2021). Community Vulnerabilities and Wellbeing after Disaster. In: Cherry, K.E., Gibson, A. (eds) The Intersection of Trauma and Disaster Behavioral Health. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51525-6_15

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