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pece_annotation_1476122211

erin_tuttle

Emergency response is addressed both in short term, through the interviews with survivors about their escape from the floodwaters and transport out of the city, as well as the lasting effects of the program and response efforts. The immediate response was not as effective as it could have been, in great part the collaborative efforts of communities rather than response groups. The delay in the arrival of response groups such as the National Guard and the Red Cross was in part due to a lack of communication, after the hurricane a significant amount of damage was done to the infrastructure of the city, creating difficulties for the rest of the country to know how serious the flooding was when the levees broke. This delayed the response and likely was responsible for the loss of many lives and continued traumatic experiences of many survivors. The following years showed an immediate lack of interest by the nation once the initial disaster was over. The article highlights this problem with emergency response, that rebuilding after a disaster can be even more challenging then the initial response and requires continued support for those effected.

pece_annotation_1480380456

erin_tuttle
  • The article referenced the Congo Republic’s Civil War as an incident responsible for a significant amount of sexual violence, I looked into the conditions there for non-military citizens in order to better understand the significance of government in public health.
  • While looking into the history of Congo the issues of neutrality for organizations such as the Red Cross, the idea being that if humanitarian aid organizations do not provide an advantage for either side of a conflict they will be allowed to provide aid to more individuals. This has proven quite effective but does often mean that aid workers are left mostly undefended in areas of conflict as neither side will protect them from the other.
  • Finally, I looked into the statistics of rape worldwide which showed not only that rape is still highly prevalent in all cultures but also that the reporting rates for rape are inaccurate in many countries without significant health infrastructure or a government interest in preventing or aiding survivors of sexual violence. 

pece_annotation_1478458005

joerene.aviles

The author is Adriana Petryna, who is an anthropologist and Professor of Anthropology at University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on the "public and private forms of scientific knowledge production, as well as on the role of science and technology in public policy". Her work doesn't specifically focus on emergency response, but more on the political and scientific developments that occur in a country after a disaster.

pece_annotation_1476641935

erin_tuttle
  • “interest in how disasters could influence communities and result in large-scale effects, as well as interest in the mental and physical health consequences of different types of disasters, the influence of context on risk to mental health, and the distinct needs of different types of disaster victims.” (170)
  • “Consistent with life-course epidemiologic perspectives (37), characteristics or experiences of individuals before, during, and after a disaster may influence mental health outcomes and interact to produce psychopathology.” (174)
  • “The key functions of pre-disaster preparation efforts are to prevent or minimize exposure to potentially traumatic disaster-related events and reduce likelihood of additional post-disaster stressors, which are both associated with post-disaster mental disorders. Local governments and communities can reduce the likelihood and severity of disaster exposure” (176)

pece_annotation_1480894028

erin_tuttle
  • “Despite the urgency and impact of violence affecting health service delivery, there is an overall lack of research that is of health-specific, publically accessible and comparable, as well as a lack of gender-disaggregated data and data on perpetrator motives.”
  • “Conclusions on violence in the healthcare setting are limited and it is difficult to examine whether or not certain sectors of aid work, such as health, are more dangerous than others. This has consequences for analyzing the drivers of violence. Within humanitarian communities and the media, and, to a lesser extent, within some sectors of academia, portrayals of violence directly affecting health service delivery in complex security environments often accentuate nebulous, macro-level factors such as the ‘shrinking humanitarian space,’”
  • “increased collaboration in data collection and data sharing is essential, both between academics, human rights NGOs and organizations delivering health services and among representatives of the latter group. As part of this, aid organizations could do more to make their anonymized data public in order to support global responses on prevention and accountability”

pece_annotation_1479076602

joerene.aviles

The methods used to produce the arguments in the article were ethnographic research, interviews with dozens of subjects suffering from epilepsy or similar disorder from several countries, and analysis of the subjects' narratives from psychological and anthropological viewpoints.  

pece_annotation_1476645924

erin_tuttle

One specific challenge found by this organization is that not all veterans want their help in dealing with the stress experienced upon returning to civilian life. Although the support is available there is no way for the organization to force anyone to accept their help, which is a big concern for the organization.

pece_annotation_1472694921

erin_tuttle

The author Sonja D. Schmid is an assistant professor at Virginia Tech, she has expertise in the history of national energy policies looking at the risk associated with the nuclear industry. She has written several papers on the Soviet nuclear industry as well as policies and political controversies surrounding the nuclear industry and its potential military uses.