Monday, April 27, 2015

Training Opportunity. Cultural Competency. Emergency Preparedness and Crisis Response.

Cultural Competency Curriculum for Disaster Preparedness and Crisis Response

  • A free, online educational program accredited for social workers, disaster mental health workers, first responders (including EMTs and firefighters) and emergency managers.
  • To learn more about the development process, please visit the Document Archive.
  • Visit the program to learn more and to register.
Welcome to Culturally Competency Curriculum for Disaster Preparedness and Crisis Response at HHS OMH’s Think Cultural Health. Each of the programs featured on Think Cultural Health (TCH) are founded on the National Standards for Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services in Health and Health Care (National CLAS Standards).
In April 2013, the National CLAS Standards were re-released after undergoing a two-year enhancement initiative. This program, along with others featured on TCH, is scheduled to be under annual review for accreditation purposes and will be updated to reflect the National CLAS Standards enhancements.
To assist you during this transition, we recommend that you reference this crosswalk (PDF - 115 KB) and fact sheet (PDF - 59 KB) which will assist in understanding the numbering and organization of the re-released National CLAS Standards.

Friday, April 24, 2015

Training Opportunity. Pacific ADA Center. Closing Gaps in Local Emergency Plans and Grassroots Emergency Planning

http://adapresentations.org/schedule.php

Announcing a new webinar - "FEMA Promising Practices: Closing Gaps in Local Emergency Plans and Grassroots Emergency Planning"

May 14th, 2015

Webinars begin at 2.30pm ET/1.30pm CT/12.30 pm MT/11.30am PT/8.30am Hawaii.
This presentation will share two practices that brought people together to bring about increased knowledge and action on emergency preparedness. First, we will hear about the lessons learned from the Massachusetts Active Planning project, which brought together local disability community members with their localities, to work collaboratively, share resources and expertise about emergency preparedness and response for and with people with disabilities, ultimately enhancing resilience for the whole community. Our speakers will focus on a replicable collaborative, inclusive Community Stakeholder Meeting (CSM) gap analysis process to address issues of community-wide concern, such as needs assessment, resident participation in local emergency planning, risk communication, public preparedness education and creative use of community resources to address emergency needs, for example in emergency shelters. Our second set of speakers will describe an effort to get people with disabilities and other access and functional needs to prepare for emergencies, for that group to communicate needs to emergency responders, and to encourage businesses and local civic leaders to plan cooperatively for needs through periodic community meetings.
Learning Objectives:
  • Understand how to identify key stakeholders in the community and learn strategies for collaboration.
  • Learn how to perform a gap analysis of your local emergency plan using the Active Planning Workbook and identify priorities and strategies for plan improvement.
  • Learn strategies and practical steps for improving the general state of emergency preparedness in a community.
Presenter:
  • Sue Wolf-Fordham and Nancy Shea, Active Planning Project, University of Massachusetts Medical School E.K. Shriver Center Emergency Preparedness & Response Initiative.
  • Ted Stamp Southwestern Center for Independent Living and Tammy VanOverbeke, Lyon County Emergency Manager.
To view all of the sessions for the coming year, or to see previous sessions, go to http://www.adapresentations.org/schedule.php
Pacific ADA Center
555 12th Street
Suite 1030
Oakland, CA 94607

Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Understanding Nuclear Energy Pros and Cons.

Community and family preparedness internationally.

There are benefits to the use of nuclear energy.  If the waste of nuclear energy is deposited in your back yard how would you feel?

Plan for minor disruptions, and disruptions that persist until it turns into a disaster.

Review (click) on the ‘Radioactive Waste’ heading for more information.

BEMA



NRC Masthead


This email was sent to BEMA@BlackEmergManagersAssociation.org using GovDelivery, on behalf of: U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) · 11555 Rockville Pike · Rockville, MD 20852 · 301-415-7000

Monday, April 20, 2015

Local, Regional, and Internationally. Resilience. The Importance of Community.

http://www.fastcoexist.com/3044933/the-power-of-human-resilience-after-major-disasters-and-the-importance-of-community


The Power Of Human Resilience After Major Disasters— And The Importance Of Community

Researchers had the unique chance to measure the "happiness" of vulnerable New Orleans residents before and after Hurricane Katrina. The results are uplifting.
Two years before Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, killing 1,800 people and destroying more than 60% of the city’s housing stock, a group of researchers embarked on what was then an average academic study designed to improve the educational performance of about 1,000 low-income parents enrolled at two community colleges in the city.
The storm disrupted the researchers' entire study but proved to have a silver lining: Their initial survey was suddenly incredibly valuable for an entirely different purpose. If the researchers, based at several universities around the country, could get in touch with everyone again, they’d have something relatively rare in social science research: A before and after comparison of how people respond to the worst and most unpredictable kinds of disasters.
The Resilience in Survivors of Katrina ("RISK") Project was born, and the researchers ended up tracking down about 70% of their initial cohort twice: one year after the disaster and again after four years. They conducted the same surveys again, also adding questions about how the hurricane had affected their lives. In the years since these surveys, the RISK project has published dozens of studies that compare the pre- and post-Katrina results on topics ranging from post-traumatic stress, child outcomes, residential mobility, and mental health.
Laurie Barr via Shutterstock
One of the intriguing studies to come out of the work was published recently in theJournal of Happiness Studies. It looked at what you’d expect: The pre- and post-disaster levels of happiness among 491 of the survey participants, all women. It honed in on how they answered the survey question, "If you were to consider your life in general these days, how happy or unhappy would you say you are?"
The results, according Rocio Calvo, an assistant professor at Boston College’s School of Social Work and the lead researcher on the happiness study, were encouraging and surprising. Even only one year after the storm, almost 89% of women remained in the "somewhat happy" or "very happy" categories, though there was a drop in happiness on average. However, by four years after the storm, almost all of the respondents had gone back to their pre-storm happiness levels. "I think individuals are more resilient than they are given credit for," she says.
This is amazing to think about. These are already vulnerable women who went through major stress because of Katrina—85% of their homes were seriously damaged and almost one-third had lost a family member or close friend. On average, they experienced at least three major stress factors during the storm, such as no medical care for themselves or a loved one or no food to eat.
There was one exception: 38 women who continued to have lower levels of happiness even four years after the storm. They were more likely to be living on their own after the storm and reported consistently lower levels of perceived support from their communities.
"Our research showed that social support, both before and after Hurricane Katrina, was the main factor associated with women's happiness," Calvo says.
Calvo, who also studies happiness in Latino immigrant communities, believes the study underlines the importance of supporting the community fabric in vulnerable populations. Social workers, she says, can’t just come in and dictate how communities should use resources, even if they mean to help. "Communities might be poor and vulnerable, but they may know better than you what works," she says.
[Top Photo: imagist via Shutterstock]

Friday, April 17, 2015

ANTI VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN ACT (AVAWA) campaign. April 2015

Wale,  I fully support anti-violence against women.  Will do my utmost to spread the world to increase the signatures.

Charles


From: Wale Ajibade [mailto:wale.ajibade@africanviews.org]
Sent: Wednesday, April 15, 2015 3:51 PM
To: charlesdsharp@blackemergmanagersassociation.org
Subject: I need your support on this. Please read

Dear brother Charles:

I hope this message finds you in good health and at ease. Allow me to inform you that we have publicly launched the ANTI VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN ACT (AVAWA) campaign. We hope you will support the Bill by signing the petition.  We also hope that you will encourage your network to sign the petition as well and support our goal to reach 1,000,000 signatures. Volume of people signing on behalf of an organization will be shared openly and merited as co-signees of the petition and recognized partners.

As you may agree, we need all the support we can get to have the Anti Violence Against Women Act (AVAWA) adopted as an imperative component of sustainable legislative strategy for peace and security in Africa. The AVAWA initiative is a non-intrusive diplomatic strategy to mitigate as well as make ending violence against women and girls a top priority for African States. AVAWA suggests that the African States’ governments honor the existing provision for women as stated in their constitutions with a comprehensive, multi-sectorial strategic national plan for reducing and ending violence against women. Adopting AVAWA may encourage countries that do not have gender sensitive legislation in their constitution to recognize the need for such inclusion.  Your endorsement will make the AVAWA annual report a legal tender of nations’ accountability act on the issue of women and human rights. Failure to make effective use of the opportunity that AVAWA presents may subject African countries to a perpetual cycle of interventionist agenda that has no real effect.

Making AVAWA a priority gives Africa a great boost on its cause for self-determination with extensive benefit from the value of advancing the status for women around the world. It will also empower the Anti Violence Against Women Associations to create a global network and set stage for the PINK Africa Summit. Detail information about AVAWA is provided to guide you through the full understanding of the detriments of Violence Against Women and the all-encompassing benefit of AVAWA at this link: http://bit.ly/AVAWA-petition

Please click here to sign the petition: http://bit.ly/support_AVAWA

Thank you,

Wale Idris Ajibade
                Executive Director, African Views Organization

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