Emergency Preparedness in PAS Users

About the webcast

While preparedness for an emergency is important and challenging for anyone, planning can be especially challenging for those who need personal assistance services (PAS) to live independently. This session will present the results of an online survey and follow-up interviews with individuals who have real world experience with living through an emergency or disaster that required them to either evacuate or shelter in place. We will review the survey responses from individuals who provided experiences and approaches to planning for PAS in an emergency on topics such as: type of emergency or disaster they experienced, where did they go in the emergency (evacuated or sheltered in place), how did they receive PAS during the emergency, use of an emergency plan, inclusion of personal assistants in emergency plans, how did the emergency plan work during the emergency, did they change their plan after the emergency experience, and advice for others.

About the Presenter

Robyn Gershon, MHS, DrPH, is a Professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics and Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies at UCSF. Dr. Gershon’s teaching and advising responsibilities primarily focus on disaster preparedness, disaster science, and the emerging field of public health emergency preparedness. She recently developed and tested a new construct “emergency preparedness safety climate.” She conducted and published the first paper on disaster preparedness in home care and worked to publicize the fact that this sector was potentially underprepared for large scale and fast evolving disasters. Dr. Gershon served as the Principal Investigator in the landmark “World Trade Evacuation Study,” designed to assess the individual (demographic, social and behavioral), organizational, and structural barriers to evacuation from the World Trade Center (WTC) on September 11, 2001. The WTC Evacuation Study documented (in over 10 publications to date) the important role of individual and organizational emergency preparedness on evacuation outcomes.

Webcast Instructions

First time user support is available at: http://support.blackboardcollaborate.com. This covers downloading and installing the required software and testing your connection.

Free online training is available at: http://www.elluminate.com/Services/Training/?id=70

The audio of the conference can also be accessed by phone at 1-800-625-5918, passcode 7023043.