Community Resilience

Conceptual Models

There is wide disparity between the definitions of community resilience. A literature review conducted by RAND found that authors typically define community resilience based on a community's capabilities and/or capacities. Community capabilities include a community's ability to absorb or resist a disaster, maintain basic functions during a disaster, respond, recover, and/or mitigate threats. Community capacities include a community's level of knowledge about threats, level of engagement or empowerment to address risks, existence of social networks for response and recovery, and/or trust in government or public health. Fran Norris and colleagues developed one of the more comprehensive models of community resilience. Norris suggests that community resilience is dependent on four networked adaptive capacities that contribute to adaptation following a disaster: (1) economic development, (2) information and communication, (3) community competence, and (4) social capital. [Page 131]Economic development encompasses the number of economic resources, the diversity of those resources, and the ability to distribute resources to those who are in most need. Information and communication refers to the ability of organizations within a community to collaborate and coordinate their efforts to pass information and communicate with each other and the community. Community competence is the extent to which individuals can engage in collective action and decision making. Social capital refers to interorganizational and interpersonal connections, the available and perceived social support of community members, the perceived connectedness of individuals with each other and the physical place where they are living, and the engagement of individuals in organizations. Norris and colleagues suggest that the robustness, redundancy, and rapidity of these adaptive capacities predict community resilience. The predictive validity of Norris's model, as well as other existing models, needs to be evaluated.

National Policy

Public responses to disasters shape the development and implementation of national policies designed to guide regional and local governments, as well as individuals, on how to prepare and respond to future disasters. In December 2006, the U.S. Congress and the president enacted the Pandemic and All Hazards Preparedness Act (PAHPA). The act intends to improve the nation's public health, medical preparedness, and response capabilities for emergencies. Among the many components of this act, it established the office of Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) and required the development of a National Health Security Strategy (NHSS) every 4 years. The ASPR leads the nation in preventing, preparing for, and responding to the adverse health effects of public health emergencies and disasters as well as leading the development of the NHSS. One of the two primary goals of the NHSS, published in December 2009, is to build community resilience. The NHSS suggests that communities build resilience by implementing policies and practices that promote health and ensure access to care, support health-related behaviors, and encourage emergency preparedness and response. The goal of community resilience is obtained through 10 strategic objectives, accomplished through the operational capabilities of communities and individuals. These calculated objectives were informed by RAND's review of the literature and include, among others, creating informed and empowered individuals and communities, developing situational awareness, developing timely and effective communications, and incorporating postincident health recovery in planning and responses.

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