This document provides important resource information on disaster preparedness for people with special needs and disabilities.

The Consortium for Infant and Child Health (CINCH), in cooperation with the Children's Hospital of the King's Daughters, developed a guide for families of children with special needs to use to better prepare for emergencies.

The Los Angeles County Community Disaster Resilience project is aims to promote community resilience during public health emergencies by engaging community-based organizations as partners with the goal to develop a network of agencies typically involved in providing services during a disaster.

The Seattle-King County health department has added a comic book discussing pandemic influenza to its disaster comic book series. The comic talks about one family's experience during the 1918 global influenza pandemic and provides tips for pandemic influenza preparedness today.

The Cobb/NMA Health Institute has developed an immunization toolkit for healthcare providers aimed at promoting flu shot rates in culturally diverse communities. The toolkit provides background information about how minority populations are disproportionately affected by influenza and provides suggestions on how to work around community barriers to vaccination.

This recent article from Emergency Management News describes promising practices from across the country to integrate the needs of diverse and vulnerable population into preparedness planning. It discusses the efforts of the Philadelphia Department of Public Health, Greater Boston Jewish Emergency Management System, Lane County, OR Department of Public Health, CARD, and Drexel University School of Public Health. To access the article CLICK HERE.

This article, recently appearing in the American Journal of Public Health, explores racial disparities in food access during the Hurricane Katrina recovery period. Findings indicate that existing disparities in food access for African American neighborhoods worsened after the storm. Although improvements have been made, by 2009 disparities were no better than pre-storm levels. To access the article CLICK HERE.  

Ready or Not?, a reported released annually by Trust for America’s Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, featured a commentary on strategies and priorities for meeting the needs of racially and ethnically diverse populations across all phases of an emergency. The report uses a series of indicators and metrics to grade and rank all 50 states and DC on their level of preparedness. To view the full report CLICK HERE.