The user walks through the stories through their website in a timeline of each storm, where it follows each part of both storms. (i.e. Storm, Aftermath, Recovery, Future)
Emily Goldmann is a PhD and MPH (Master of Public Health) at the College of Global Public Health. She focuses on environmental and social causes of mental health and their consequences. While she doesn't focus on disasters, her studies intersect with those in which we are interested in: Global Health and causes of mental health disorders.
Sandro Galea is a physician and epidemiologist at Boston School of Public Health. He has a long list of other positions of research at other colleges as well. He focuses on how the social aspects of a community create mental disorders, particularly urban communities where mood-anxiety and substance abuse disorders are common. He has a particular focus also upon mass-trauma and disasters and how they affect the mental health of the world long term, such as 9-11 and Hurricane Katrina. He studies precisely what is relevant to the DSTS Network in these cases, where he looks at the mental health consequences instead of the physical consequences of these disasters.
"Soviet scientists, too, were unprepared, but they did not admit their ignorance. In an August 1986 meeting with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), they presented a crude analysis of the distribution of radiation in the Zone of Exclusion and in the Soviet Union: "assessments were made of the actual and future radiation doses received by the populations of towns, villages, and other inhabited places. As a result of these and other measures, it proved possible to keep exposures within the estab- lished limits."
"In this daily bureaucratic instantiation of Chernobyl, tensions among zone workers, resettled individuals and families, scientists, physicians, legislators, and civil servants intensified. Together, these groups became invested in a new social and moral contract between state and civil society, a contract guaranteeing them the right to know their levels of risk and to use legal means to obtain medical care and monitoring. The suf- ferers and their administrators were also supported by the nonsuffering citizens, who paid a 12 percent tax on their salaries to support compensations. The hybrid quality of this postsocialist state and social contract comes into view."
"He told me, how- ever, that "when a crying mother comes to my laboratory and asks me, Professor Lavrov, 'tell me what's wrong with my child?' I assign her a dose and say nothing more. I double it, as much as I can." The offer of a higher dose increased the likeli- hood that the mother would be able to secure social protection on account of her potentially sick child."
Good begins with explaining his own experiences working with patients suffering from epilepsy in Turkey, and his struggle to better understand the history of their illness
He then proceeds to give an in-detail explanation of one such patient, going into the specifics of the lack of clarity, and explaining the cultural connotation of different aspects of the patient-provided story, explaining why they might be muddled or less than accurate.
Next he looks at the work of others in the field, trying to get a better way of assessing the experiences of others and understanding their narrative without knowing everything they know.
In this case, the main point of the article was to be rpepared ahead of time so that the damage during and after the disaster would be minimized. With education for the communities, after a disaster it would be much easier to move and treat people without as much confusion as there might have been.
She references multiple articles and drew on her own knowledge and experience in order to argue her onclusion that humanitarianism is not equipped to handle such crimes currently.
The authors received no special funding for this article.
I found it cited in Documenting attacks on health workers and facilities in armed conflicts, otherwise no where else.
They analyzed reports, policies, and the history of health response systems in order to come to their conclusions.
Investigation after large-scale national tragedy is often contaminated with the many factors that surround that event. Since the attack on the World Trade Center was so deeply rooted in politics, culture, international relations and emotional connections, the investigation following the attacks failed to result in a dispassionate, scientific verdict. Instead, it became muddled in the many conflicting and intertwining interests that came with the attack.