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Snow Storms and Vulnerable Populations: Local Public Health Activities in Response to the 2014-2015 Severe Winter Weather

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2018

Dorothy Bernard ,
Souleymane Konate  and
Elena Savoia
Dorothy Bernard
Affiliation:
Emergency Preparedness, Research, Evaluation and Practice Program, Division of Policy Translation and Leadership Development, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts
Souleymane Konate*
Affiliation:
Department of Biostatistics, Emergency Preparedness, Research, Evaluation and Practice Program, Division of Policy Translation and Leadership Development, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts
Elena Savoia
Affiliation:
Department of Biostatistics, Emergency Preparedness, Research, Evaluation and Practice Program, Division of Policy Translation and Leadership Development, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts
*
Correspondence and reprint requests to Dr Souleymane Konate, Department of Biostatistics, Emergency Preparedness, Research, Evaluation and Practice Program, Division of Policy Translation and Leadership Development, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, 655 Huntington Avenue, 2-451, Boston, MA 02115 (e-mail: skonate@hsph.harvard.edu).
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Abstract

The Northeastern United States experienced some of its coldest and snowiest conditions ever recorded during the winter of 2014-2015. The snowfall and extreme temperatures created significant challenges for local health departments attempting to continue critical services and respond to storm-related needs of the community. This report from the field aims to describe the impact of the severe weather on local health departments’ operations, to examine the disruption to public health services, and to document public health support provided to vulnerable populations during the 2014-2015 winter season. Our findings show that the severe weather exposed major challenges in continuity of public health operations across health departments of various sizes and highlighted some key issues as well as effective strategies, such as collaborations with community-based organizations, to identify and address the needs of the most vulnerable during the winter storms. (Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness. 2019;13:647-649)

Keywords

public healthsevere weathervulnerable populations
Type
Report from the Field
Information
Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness , Volume 13 , Issue 3 , June 2019 , pp. 647 - 649
Copyright
Copyright © 2018 Society for Disaster Medicine and Public Health, Inc. 

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