People vary in climate change skepticism and in their views on disaster cause and prevention. For example, the United States boasts higher rates of climate skepticism than other countries, especially among Republicans. Research into the individual differences that shape variation in climate-related beliefs represents an important opportunity for those seeking ways to mitigate climate change and climate-related disasters (e.g., floods). In this registered report, we proposed a study examining how individual difference in physical formidability, worldview, and affect relate to attitudes about disaster and climate change. We predicted that highly formidable men would tend to endorse social inequality, hold status quo defensive worldviews, report lower levels of empathy, and report attitudes that promote disaster risk accumulation via lesser support for social intervention. The results of an online study (Study 1) support the notion that men’s self-perceived formidability is related to disaster and climate change beliefs in the predicted direction and that this relationship is mediated by hierarchical worldview and status quo defense but not empathy. An analysis of a preliminary sample for the in-lab study (Study 2) suggests that self-perceived formidability relates to disaster views, climate views, and status quo maintaining worldviews.

Disaster in Washington State (USA) is inevitable. It is incumbent on health care providers to understand the practice environment as it will be affected by disasters. This means understanding the basic concepts of emergency management, local to national emergency response structure, and the risks and vulnerabilities of the region where one works. This understanding will help health care providers anticipate and prepare for disaster response and recovery. Washington State has many unique features with regard to climate and geography, population, public health, and general infrastructure that create significant vulnerabilities to disaster and strengths with regard to potential response and recovery. This report attempts to define and contextualize emergency management and to condense the extensive research and planning that has been conducted in Washington State surrounding disaster assessment, planning, mitigation, and response from a health care providerʼs prospective. The aim is to increase awareness of and preparation for disaster-related topics among health care providers by creating informed responders.

Risk assessment is a key component of public health interventions intended to prevent or reduce adverse health effects. Health risk assessments are widely used to guide public health programming, as well as multi-sectoral studies of environmental impact and developmental decision making. Analytical risk assessment is a well-validated tool that is routinely used among certain subsets of public health, including those for chemical, radiological, and microbiological risk assessment. However, this is not the case for risk assessments involving disasters in general, or more specifically, for public health emergencies involving environmental hazards (eg, technological, hydro-meteorological, and seismic).

There remains a need for a reproducible, well-validated, disaster-related health risk assessment process that is suitable for accommodating the current gaps in certainty. This report is intended to offer a practical framework and nomenclature for assessing disaster-related health risk that is: (1) accurate; (2) based upon historical evidence; (3) quantifiable in public health terms; and (4) inclusive of uncertainty.

KeimM. Assessing Disaster-Related Health Risk: Appraisal for Prevention. Prehosp Disaster Med. 2018;33(3):317-325.