Planning for an Emergency: Strategies for Identifying and Engaging

Centers For Disease Control And Prevention (CDC)

December 1, 2015

    During disasters, at-risk groups (including those with disability, low English language proficiency, and low socioeconomic status) are more likely to be adversely affected. Often they have a limited capacity to anticipate, cope with, resist, and recover from a disaster event.

CDC’s new guidance document can help emergency managers identify and engage at-risk groups to participate in emergency planning in their communities.

    By using the approaches presented in this new CDC guidance document, emergency managers can design and implement community-based efforts and allocate resources more efficiently during all four phases of disasters (preparedness, response, recovery, and mitigation). These actions will help to decrease the adverse effects of disaster on the most vulnerable portions of their populations. 

    The guidance document discusses the concept of at-risk groups (i.e., socially vulnerable populations) and gives examples of approaches and tools that can be used alone or in combination to identify social vulnerabilities within communities.

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