Healthcare for Fire and Smoke Readiness

There is an urgent need for planning that supports health and safety during disaster events in healthcare settings that focus on older adults. Specifically, poor health outcomes after disasters in nursing homes are unacceptably high. Multiple studies have described that exposure to disasters is associated with increased risk of mortality, hospitalization, and subsequent functional decline among nursing home residents. 

Multiple studies have described that exposure to disasters is associated with increased risk of mortality, hospitalization, and subsequent functional decline among nursing home residents 

Our central hypothesis is that the development of an implementation strategy deployed collaboratively across all stakeholder groups will contribute to improved readiness for fire and smoke events.  

Our overarching research approach is to deeply understand and prepare for implementation of strategies to improve emergency preparedness in nursing homes. Guided by implementation science theory, we will survey stakeholders across a broad representation of nursing homes including across the four defined stakeholder groups (residents, staff, families and administration) to identify key institutional mechanisms associated with nursing home readiness during fire and smoke events. We will then select a sample of nursing homes from those surveyed and convene a modified Delphi panel, representing the four stakeholder groups, and content experts to prioritize strategies to promote adoption and implementation of a readiness strategy, focusing on primary outcomes of feasibility, fidelity, penetration, acceptability, sustainability, uptake and costs.

This proposal will support the development and implementation of effective and equitable emergency preparedness plans to be ready for disasters. There is an urgent need for emergency preparedness plans that address inequitable outcomes after disaster events. The proposed work is expected to advance the field of disasters and climate change by providing new policy-relevant evidence to advance health equity.