Thanks for participating in the follow-up workshop on September 27, 2021.
We invite you to check out the After Action Report that summarizes the workshop discussion.
Working Group Background
With the approaching hurricane season, we will simultaneously manage hurricane responses while combating COVID-19. Isolation, social distancing, and quarantine are steps to disrupt the COVID-19 contagion. However, evacuation and sheltering actions, as currently practiced, are associated with increasing social interactions, which may promote the spread of the virus. This conflict between evacuation and sheltering practices with virus pandemic containment measures has important implications for population health and wellbeing, especially for vulnerable and medically fragile populations.
This Working Group will convene calls of state, county and local leaders, experts, and providers from public health, government, health care, community civic groups, and others to identify knowledge gaps, needs and concerns related to the upcoming 2020 hurricane season under the current public health crisis. Through these calls, the group will facilitate relationship-building, information and resource sharing, and co-learning to fill knowledge gaps to inform policies, procedures, and planning. The Working Group will focus on 6 topics:
Overview of vulnerability and planning for evacuation and sheltering
Health: infectious disease hazard control principles AND continuity of care
Logistics: evacuation/transportation, shelter operations/built environment (congregate/non-congregate), supplies
Public messaging/risk communication: on disaster preparedness, evacuation, sheltering
Workforce: evacuation, shelter staffing –workforce structure, capacity, PPE, telemedicine
Psychological Adjustment: responders, public health workers & public - training, messaging, trauma
This COVID-19 Working Group effort is supported by the National Science Foundation-funded Social Science Extreme Events Research (SSEER) Network and the CONVERGE facility at the Natural Hazards Center at the University of Colorado Boulder (NSF Award #1841338).
Project Team
Working Group Leaders
Sunshine Education & Research Center (ERC)
Chiles Center for Healthy Mothers & Babies
College of Public Health
University of South Florida
Research Team
University of South Florida
Dr. Kelsey Merlo
Victoria Ballard
Melanie Cruz
Ahlam Farzan
Mitchell Jaskela
Kayla Jones
Madeleine LaGoy
Megan Montoya
Blake Scott
Michael Shekari
Beatrice Smith
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