Determinants of Health and Related Barriers Impacting Disaster Recovery Efforts Capella 4060 Assessment 3 Disaster Recovery Plan NURS-FPX 4060 Practicing in the Community to Improve Population Health ​​​​​​​Introduction

Capella 4060 Assessment 3 Disaster Recovery Plan

NURS-FPX 4060 Practicing in the Community to Improve Population Health

Introduction

Hello everyone, my name is _______. I hope you all are in a good state of health and mind. I’m a registered nurse by profession. Currently, I am working as a senior nurse at Valley City Regional Hospital. The reason I am here is to present you all with a disaster management and recovery plan which I have created for the upcoming disaster in the form of tornados. To let you all know about the purpose of this disaster plan, Jennifer Paulson, the hospital administrator of Valley City Regional Hospital broke the news of upcoming tornados by National Weather Services (NWS) to me. Therefore, we need to be prepared in advance to prevent any mass casualties for which this disaster recovery plan is created. Now, I’ll begin with our topic for the presentation. 

Determinants of Health and Related Barriers Impacting Disaster Recovery Efforts

 There are various factors that in combination impact health such as cultural, social, and economic factors. The summary of these factors is those conditions where we live, the conditions of our environment, our religious and custom beliefs, genetics, education level, and relationships with peers and families. Together these factors are called determinants of health. In a disaster recovery plan, it is important to consider these factors and barriers so that an effective plan for disaster preparedness and recovery can be designed and executed. So now, let’s look into some of these barriers that can impact our disaster recovery efforts.

Cultural Barriers

The values and traditions that act as barriers to disaster preparedness and recovery management are disparities in cultural perceptions, ideologies, and prejudices; hence, impact the health and safety of the affected individuals. For example, in disaster recovery, some cultural people like Africans want private transportation over the ambulance. While other cultures like Asians prefer ambulances only for sick people. These priorities in reaching healthcare systems create a delay in disaster recovery. Some cultures prefer traditional healing and folk medicine rejecting hospital treatment which creates prolonged time to recovery. There are some cultural myths that consider widowhood to be unlucky and prone to disasters and loss of social status and respect resulting in depression and anxiety (Rahmani et al., 2022). 

Social Barriers

The social barriers that impact health, safety, and disaster recovery efforts are the absence of technological information systems which prevents adequate and timely communication, lack of transportation, long travel distances, poor infrastructure of roads and towns, and low income causing unavailability of resources for quick recovery from disasters. These barriers not only hinder the preparedness of disaster recovery plans but also delay the health recovery of individuals (Rouhanizadeh et al., 2020).

Economic Barriers 

The rate of recovery from a disaster depends on the economy of any community. If the financial condition is good, there are chances that disaster preparedness and recovery can be faster as a sufficient amount of money is required to procure resources such as high healthcare staff, increased transportation vehicles, an increased number of shelter homes, and medication treatment affected individuals, etc (Finucane et al., 2020). Hence, the economic constraints put an additional barrier to the preparation & recovery of disasters, impacting the safety and health of affected people.   

These factors are interrelated to each other and together they influence the safety, health, and disaster recovery efforts. As the cultural factors of peculiar customs along with the social factors act as the synergists to affecting safety, health, and disaster recovery efforts. Hence, if the cultural factors are overcome by providing cultural sensitivity principles along with fulfilling the social issues related to the conditions where people live such as environmental factors and individual factors like age, genetics, etc. will improve the disaster recovery efforts. Similarly, economic aid will promote betterment in overcoming social and cultural barriers.

Proposed Disaster Recovery Plan

The disaster recovery plan to prepare and manage upcoming tornados is based on the strategy called MAP-IT approach. This strategy consists of these steps: Mobilize, Assess, Plan, Implement, and Track. In this strat