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.

There have been a handful of cases of children in Iowa who have contracted a strain of swine flu. This is a report issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) which highlights cases of children in Iowa who have contracted a strain of swine flu. To learn more, CLICK HERE.

This article, appearing in Emergency Management News, describes strategies developed and employed by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment to engage diverse populations in preparedness, response, and recovery planning.  To access the article CLICK HERE. 

This recent report from the United States Government Accountability Office discusses lessons learned from the H1N1 pandemic, including the need to better reach non-English speakers. The report highlights promising practices to meet the needs of LEP communities from local jurisdictions across the country in addition to recommendations for future planning at the federal-level. To access the report CLICK HERE.   

This article, recently appearing in Health Promotion Practice, presents the findings from a series of focus groups that were conducted in Houston, Texas to inform the development of effective emergency communication and service delivery strategies in linguistically isolated communities. To access the full summary and article CLICK HERE.      

This article, recently appearing in the Journal of Public Health Management and Practice, explores racial/ethnic disparities in H1N1 vaccination rates in Los Angeles County. Rate ratios of vaccination were as follows: White, reference; African American, 0.5; Asian, 3.2; Hispanic, 1.5; Native American, 1.9; and Pacific Islander, 4.3. To access the full summary and article CLICK HERE.