Disaster Preparedness Among Older Adults with Disabilities: Demographic Characteristics, Informal Support, and Community Trust

People with disabilities are highly vulnerable in disasters and are more likely to suffer from a lack of disaster prevention and relief services (Peek & Stough, 2010; Jagger, 2011). Based on the previous research, about 80% older adults have at least one chronic condition, which result in frail older adults having special needs during emergencies (Aldrich & Benson, 2008). Although social work has long been involved in disaster response, little research has been conducted on assessment of vulnerable populations’ preparedness to minimize the impact of a natural disaster. This study will examine factors associated with disaster preparedness among older adults with disabilities. Special attention will be paid on examining the association of demographic characteristics, informal support, and community trust with disaster preparedness in disaster situations.

Using a cross-sectional design, a total of 1162 persons with disabilities in 6 US states responded, through telephone interviews, to questions about disaster preparedness. Given that no standardized questionnaires were available, most survey questions were developed by researchers based on previous studies and literature (Gerber et al., 2010). Interview items assessed (1) level of disaster or evacuation event preparedness (2) previous disaster experiences (3) level of formal or informal support (4) Socio-demographic, and health conditions. Descriptive statistics, correlations, hierarchical regression, and logistic regressions were performed using SPSS 20.0.

The disaster preparedness is conceptualized in two ways; 1) three emergency plan questions (e.g., questions about specific destination that people would travel to, specific plan for what people would take if they had to leave their home) and 2) resource preparedness questions that composed of two Likert scale items. For this study, people over 55 years of age were included for the final analysis (N=732). Regarding emergency plan, results showed that 60.6% had specific destination plan, 63.3% had a specific plan for what they take, and 48.3% know where a public emergency shelter is located. In a hierarchical regression model with resource preparedness as the dependent variable (n = 532; R²= .31, p < .001), the interaction of informal support and community trust was significant. This indicated that, overall, if people receive high informal support from their families, friends, and neighbors, they more likely to perceive high level of resource preparedness during disaster. However, the effect is much stronger for people who perceive high level of trust from government and service organizations. For example, for the people who perceive low level of trust, there is a slight increase in disaster preparedness as informal support increase. However, for high trust group, there is a larger increase in resource preparedness as informal support increase. Also, demographic characteristics, which includes income (β = .165, p <.001), education (β = .097, p =.03) were positively related to resource preparedness. However, health condition, the use of any medical devises or service animals was negatively related to disaster preparedness (β= -.267, p<.001). This study has implications that social capital both at the community and the individual level is one of the critical factors that promote disaster preparedness among older adults.