Journal Articles

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://mro.massey.ac.nz/handle/10179/7915

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Now showing 1 - 6 of 6
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    Is equity meaningfully incorporated into pandemic preparedness and response? A scoping review and critical analysis of Ebola andCOVID-19 outbreak responses in Uganda 2019-2023
    (Taylor and Francis Group, 2025-12-31) Redondo G; Murray L; Bromhead C; Makumbi I
    Societal inequities produce vulnerabilities that infectious disease can exploit. Current approaches to pandemic prevention, detection and response are led by the International Health Regulations IHR and the Global Health Security Agenda. However, to contain the spread of infectious diseases, localised action to address systemic inequities must be considered. The purpose of this scoping review and equity analysis is to 1) Synthesise the available information on Uganda’s Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) and COVID-19 preparedness and outbreak responses between 2019 and 2023, and 2) Critique if and how Uganda’s Ministry of Health incorporated concepts of health equity in its EVD and COVID-19 interventions, while building national capacity to identify and prevent public health emergencies. This scoping review and critical analysis was conducted following the five-stage process defined by Levac et al. After identification and screening, the scoping review was based on six preparedness and response plans, three after-action reviews, and 20 grey literature and peer-reviewed articles. The findings revealed that the EVD and COVID-19 preparedness and response plans in Uganda show the country’s commitment and readiness for early detection and response to infectious disease outbreaks. However, further examination of the plans reveals missed opportunities to address systemic inequities. The ongoing mpox outbreak, declared a PHEIC by WHO on July 23, 2022, with significant impacts in African countries including Uganda, further underscores the need for a paradigm shift in managing infectious disease outbreaks. Such a shift may be similar to that experienced by the field of disaster risk reduction, which underwent a significant transformation at the Sendai Conference in 2015 towards a more holistic and proactive approach that addresses underlying systemic issues and focuses on building resilience. The exclusive focus on biomedical strategies to manage infectious diseases fails to address the social aspects of transmission, the local perceptions of illness, and community vulnerabilities often associated with social and historical perspectives. The social determinants of health disparities should be incorporated into pandemic planning and response. This will contribute to fostering equitable health outcomes and resilience in the face of the multifaceted challenges posed by future pandemics and environmental changes.
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    Exploring communication practices that promote community participation and collective action for reducing disaster risks in New Zealand
    (John Wiley and Sons Ltd on behalf of ODI Global, 2025-10-01) Das M; Becker J; Doyle EEH
    Emergency management agencies in New Zealand are increasingly engaging with communities to promote civic participation and collective action for reducing disaster risks. Utilising a mixed-methods approach, this paper explores the communication practices that support these efforts. The qualitative findings reveal that emergency management agencies, different government organisations, community-based groups, and local people play a key role in the process. Communicative actions supporting people's participation include scoping and relationship-building activities, awareness-raising events, advertisements and promotions, and community conversations. Based on these findings and guided by communication infrastructure theory, a conceptual map of the communication networks, resources, and processes adopted to promote people's participation and collective action is presented here. The survey results indicate that emergency management agencies are the main communicators promoting people's participation. Interpersonal influence and community conversations are most effective in terms of involving new people. Both the theoretical and practical implications of the study's findings are discussed in this paper.
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    Flood fragility and vulnerability functions for residential buildings in the Province of Leyte, Philippines
    (John Wiley and Sons Ltd onbehalf of Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management, 2024-11-12) Besarra I; Opdyke A; Aquino DH; Santiago J; Mendoza JE; Lagmay AMFA
    The Philippines experiences frequent flooding, but, despite expansive tools for risk reduction, there remain gaps in understanding generalised relationships between flood events and damage to residential structures for regions outside the nation's capital. This gap has limited the ability to model flood risk and damage without robust functions to link hazards and housing vulnerability. This research draws on 394 household surveys to empirically derive a suite of flood fragility and vulnerability functions for residential structures in the Province of Leyte for light material, elevated light material and masonry structures. The results showed that masonry construction was more resilient to floods compared to light material counterparts. Elevated light material structures also exhibited lower damages at low inundations but tend to fail abruptly at flood depths greater than 3 m. By empirically deriving flood damage functions, the findings contribute to a more localised approach to quantifying housing vulnerability and risk that can be used for catastrophe and risk modelling, with applications for government agencies, the insurance industry and disaster risk researchers. This research lays the foundation for future flood risk mapping with growing significance under climate change.
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    A New Relative Risk Index for Hospitals Exposed to Tsunami
    (Frontiers Media S.A., 2021-03-31) Baiguera M; Rossetto T; Palomino J; Dias P; Lopez-Querol S; Siriwardana C; Hasalanka H; Ioannou I; Robinson D; Magill CR
    The failure of hospitals in recent tsunami have caused extensive social and economic losses. A simple but quantitative approach is required to assess the resilience of healthcare systems to tsunami, which relates not only to hospital building integrity, but also to maintaining hospital functionality. This paper proposes a new tsunami relative risk index (TRRI) that quantifies the impact of tsunami on critical units, (e.g. Intensive Care Unit, Maternity Ward, etc) in individual hospitals, as well as the impact on service provision across a network of hospitals. A survey form is specifically developed for collecting of field data on hospitals for the TRRI evaluation. In its current form TRRI is designed for hospital buildings of reinforced concrete construction, as these are the building types most commonly used worldwide for housing critical units. The TRRI is demonstrated through an application to three hospitals located along the southern coast of Sri Lanka. The TRRI is evaluated for three potential tsunami inundation events and is shown to be able to identify issues with both the building and functional aspects of hospital critical units. Three “what-if” intervention scenarios are presented and their effect on the TRRI is assessed. Through this exercise, it is shown that the TRRI can be used by decision makers to simply explore the effectiveness of individual and combined interventions in improving the tsunami resilience of healthcare provision across the hospital system.
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    The International Volcanic Health Hazard Network (IVHHN): reflections on 20 years of progress
    (Frontiers Media S.A., 2023-08-17) Horwell CJ; Baxter PJ; Damby DE; Elias T; Ilyinskaya E; Sparks RSJ; Stewart C; Tomašek I; Viccaro M
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    Citizen science initiatives in high-impact weather and disaster risk reduction
    (Massey University, 20/12/2021) Vinnell LJ; Becker JS; Scolobig A; Johnston DM; Tan ML; McLaren L
    High-impact weather events cause considerable social and economic harm, with these effects likely to increase as climate change drives extremes and population growth leads to commensurate growth in exposure. As part of the World Meteorological Organization’s World Weather Research Programme, the 10-year High-Impact Weather (HIWeather) Project facilitates global cooperation and collaboration to improve weather prediction, forecasting, and warning. As part of this, the HIWeather Citizen Science Project identifies and promotes activities which involve citizens in the warning value chain, from “sensors” where they passively provide data, through to “collaborators” where they are involved in designing, running, interpreting, and applying the research. As well as benefitting global efforts to reduce societal impacts of weather and other natural hazards, citizen science also encourages hazard awareness and scientific literacy and interest. This editorial introduces the HIWeather Citizen Science Project special issue, summarizing the three papers in this issue in the broader context of high-impact weather and citizen science.