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The author is making the point that we are too caught up in the numbers and facts of medicine, and we need to go back to the narrative. The details that come with a patient's history and social actions contribute a great deal to outcome and treatment. The author supports this with several examples of cases he has had or heard of and how they changed his view of a treatment. 

The program is divided into three sub-programs: Radiation Disaster Medicine, Radioactivity Environmental Protection, and Radioactivity Social Recovery. The Radiation Disaster Medicine course is a four year PhD program, for those who already have professional degrees (medicine, pharmacy, dentistry, etc.) and master’s degrees (medical physics). The Radioactivity Environmental Protection course is a five year program for students who have completed a bachelors or masters in a related field. The Radioactivity Social Recovery course is a five year program for students with a bachelors or master’s. The curriculum is broken down into common subjects, specialized subjects, fieldwork, and internships. 

The NYS Ebola Preparedness Plan was a multilateral set of guidelines and protocols set forth by the Office of the Governor of the State of New York in anticipation of a potential outbreak of the ebola virus disease, also known as ebola hemorrhagic fever, in the State of New York. The stated goal of the policy was to prevent the further transmission and spread of the disease in the event of a isolated cases. The policy included guidelines for isolation, quarantine, treatment, and transportation, and involved numerous organizations, including various hospitals, EMS agencies, public safety departments, and transportation authorities. 

“More than 20 years ago, social scientists Harry Otway and Brian Wayne cautioned that accident prevention (safer designs, better operator training, etc. , but even more so emergency planning, faced significant economic and managerial hurdles.”(p199)

“Nuclear accidents have tended to trigger organizational reform with regard to nuclear emergency response, but not on an international level. In considering this problematic ground, where might we start to develop a global approach to nuclear disaster mitigation?”(p200)

“The specific kinds of highly specialized knowledge involved with operation nuclear reactors however may not be accessible to broad public debate to the same degree as, for example, evacuation policies. But in the interest of sustainable, socially legitimate solutions, arguably decisions about even the technical responses to disasters should not be left to scientists and engineers alone, whether they are based within the nuclear industry, a regulatory bod, or a nongovernmental organization.”(p196)

“For all its undeniable flaws, the nuclear industry worked for several decades- in Japan and elsewhere. That is also the truly frightening realization after Fukushima: this disaster was not ‘waiting to happen’, but occurred in a system that had been functioning reasonable well for quite some time.”(p198)

“…The Way Forward is embedded in a technocratic rationality that seeks an effective ‘technical fix’ for reducing the risk of a nuclear disaster to manageable proportions. That misses the less tangible social expertise and improvisational skills inevitable involved in any successful disaster response.” (p206)

The primary function of the US Department of Veterans Affairs is to provide benefits and support military veterans following their time in service. Although benefits have been provided to military veterans since the Revolutionary War, the VA administration was formally founded in 1930. The department now provides healthcare, insurance, education, financial assistance, and burial/memorial service to military veterans and their families. 

The American Red Cross uses the gold-standard products for most of its research and service. For disaster response, the ARC utilizes the good-will of its volunteers to address needs such as shelter, food, and health services. On the local level, chapters of the ARC have disaster action teams that respond to smaller emergencies and provide transition services to the victims of such emergencies. They also have a larger wokforce of volunteers to pull from and use for support services. 

In presenting the case of Riker's Island, the author cites numerous sources, including government officials, government agencies, industry experts, photos and maps of the island and facilities, activist groups, and two former inmates.

The authors are Stephen Collier, PhD and Andrew Lakoff, PhD. Dr, Collier is an associate professor of international affairs at UC Berkeley. He is an anthropologist by training, and focuses his research on a variety of political schools of thought and their applications. Dr, Lakoff is an associate professor of sociology and focuses his research globalization, biomedical innovation and the history of human sciences.

In this article, the author discusses the Chernobyl disaster and its impact on those who were exposed to the nuclear radiation. Moreover, she discusses the healthcare, disaster aid, and financial aid that were provided or withheld from those who survived and were affected by the disaster. The author highlights the interaction of emergency response, politics, healthcare, and economics.