The policy is a disaster relief act aimed to provide governmental aid/ assistance at the local, state, and national levels for emergency preparedness and response in the event of a major disaster.
The policy is to extend Good Samaritan laws to first responders so that they would not be liable for "spreading contamination while attempting to save lives."
Miriam Ticktin is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at The New School For Social Research in New York City. Her research focuses on "what it means to make political claims in the name of a universal humanity" and more recently looks at humanitarianism at various levels. For emergency response her work focuses more on response done for humanitarian aid and displaced peoples.
http://www.newschool.edu/nssr/faculty/?id=4d54-6379-4e44-4d35
The author is Sonja D. Schmid, an associate professor at Virginia Tech in the Department of Science and Technology in Society. She specializes in STS (science, tech, and society) analysis, nuclear industries, and energy policies. In respect to emergency response, Schmid is able to use her knowledge of previous disasters, current energy technologies, and societal influences to address what we need nationally/ internationally for how we should respond to emergencies. The ability to identify the multifaceted levels of what causes disasters is important to properly responding to them- by changing technologies, training and education of communities, and changing energy policies to avoid and handle more disaster.
Publications relevant to the DSTS Network: "Evacuation from a nuclear disaster" (http://www.jstor.org/stable/214548?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents), "A comparative institutional analysis of the Fukushima nuclear disaster: Lessons and policy implications" (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421512009433)
Research focusing on nuclear waste management, developments for safer nuclear energy and studies of the nuclear arms race are also relevant to DSTS Network.
1. USAID and their contributions to Haiti
2. The Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti and their impact
3. The United Nations and if they've been sued by Haiti for cholera epidemic
The report implies that technical professionals have to be more careful when responding to large scale disasters; staff responding to emergencies need to have more training for the many internal challenges that would lmit care and assistance to victims. MSF discussed how they had limited man power, labs, and resources.
The college was created to continue New York State's position as a leader in homeland security, cybersecurity and emergency preparedness and as a response to the growing need for professionals in those fields. Advances in technology, and increased threats to terrorism and cybersecurity in the past few decades called for the formation of this college. Overall it was a strategic political and economic decision by Governor Andrew Cuomo as it would provide training in a field that's expected to grow by 650,000 employees (for cybersecurity) in the next decade*.
The argument is supported with case studies, anecdotal evidence from medical officers, research on the history of the article, and news reports regarding the law.
The policy doesn't specifically address the elderly or children, who are very vulnerable populations during disasters/ emergencies (but it does address pets and animals in Title IV).
The central argument is that healthcare professionals are not trained well enough in mentally/ emotionally handling patient relationships when providing end-of-life care for terminal/ chronic illnesses.