The Social, Economic and Health Consequences of Natural Disasters

Exploratory Workshop Date: Monday, June 11, 2012
Time: 9:00 AM – 3:00 PM (at 3:00 PM, the project PIs will go into a closed meeting)
Location: Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, 9 Bow Street, Cambridge (Directions)

Overview and goals of the workshop:

Studies of natural disasters generally have four major shortcomings.  First, most studies have no pre-disaster baseline data and therefore it is difficult to establish that the disaster is the cause of some of the measured consequences such as mental and physical health outcomes.  Second, most studies focus on the immediate aftermath of the disaster and very few studies follow people over time to study the longitudinal patters of recovery and vulnerability.  Third, most studies focus on a single consequence of the disaster individually, often reflecting disciplinary boundaries.  For instance, studies of mental health after a disaster often do not look at social, economic and geographic consequences.  Finally, disasters are almost never studied comparatively so that findings are limited to the society or culture in which it occurred.

The Hurricane Katrina longitudinal study (Waters, Paxson, Fussell and Rhodes, PIs) and the Indonesian Tsunami longitudinal study (Frankenberg and Duncan, PIs) are exceptions to this general pattern.  This workshop will bring together the researchers to discuss what we have learned from these ongoing studies and to discuss possible ways to harmonize data and measures going forward.

Faculty Convener

Mary C. Waters, PhD, M.E. Zukerman Professor of Sociology, Harvard

Agenda

9:00-9:15: Introduction and Welcome
9:15-11:00:  Presentations – STAR Project: Study of the Aftermath and Recovery in Sumatra, Indonesia and PKSRR Project: Post Katrina Study of Resilience and Recovery
11:00-11:30: Discussion – Incorporating Pre-Disaster Data into Analyses: What difference does it make
11:30-12:00: Tracking, Attrition, and Representativeness
12:00-12:30: Mixed Methods Approaches
12:30-1:30: Lunch
1:30-3:00:  Defining and Measuring Recovery and Resilience in the Long Term: Challenges and opportunities in longitudinal studies?
3:00-4:00: Closed meeting for PIs

Speakers and participants

Mary Waters, PhD, Sociologist, Harvard university
Jean Rhodes, PhD, Psychologist, University of Massachusetts Boston
Elizabeth Fussell, PHD, Sociologist, Washington State University
Jordan Smoller, MD, Psychiatrist, Harvard Medical School
Elizabeth Frankenberg, PhD, Sociologist, Duke University
Duncan Thomas, PhD, Economist, Duke University
Amar Hamoudi, PhD, Economist, Duke University
Jenna Nobles, PhD, Demographer, University of Wisconsin Madison
Sarah Lowe, PhD, Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Massachusetts Boston
Christian Chan, PhD, Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Massachusetts Boston

Click here for a list of PUBLICATIONS relevant to this workshop.

This workshop will be open to the Harvard Community (faculty, researchers, fellows, and students). As seating is quite limited, we ask you to RSVP with your name and Harvard affiliation to Laura Price at lprice@hsph.harvard.edu. Once seating runs out, you will be put on the waiting list.