Abstract
Objective: During disasters, mass feeding and food assistance for vulnerable people are important to maintain the health of evacuees. Adequate implementations of these supports require preparedness in normal times. We aimed to determine the local governments’ preparedness for nutrition assistance during natural disasters 2.5 years after the Great East Japan Earthquake. We also examined the involvement of administrative dieticians (ADs) in disaster preparation.
Methods: We conducted a nationwide questionnaire survey in 47 prefectures, 20 designated cities, 42 core cities, 8 ordinance-designated cities, 23 special wards, and 1,649 municipalities.
Results: The response rate of the survey was 71.1% (n = 1,272). Around 50% of the autonomies had practiced emergency mass feeding and had selected available feeding facilities. The percentage of autonomies that had provided advice or instruction about disaster preparedness to nutritionally vulnerable individuals and that had developed a system to supply special diet foods ranged from 10% to 30%. Autonomies that were prefectures, those that had multiple AD staff, and those whose ADs had participated in developing regional disaster prevention plans were more likely to have created nutrition disaster manuals. Moreover, compared to the autonomies whose ADs had not participated in the development of regional disaster prevention plans, the autonomies whose ADs had participated in the development of regional disaster prevention plans were more likely to have established a system to assess the needs of special diet foods (6.9% vs 19.2%, respectively) and to have examined the means of procurement of such foods (23.6% vs 36.4%, respectively).
Conclusion: The staffing of multiple ADs and participation of ADs in the development of regional disaster prevention plans were associated with the creation of nutrition disaster manuals and preparation for the procurement of special diet foods for nutritionally vulnerable evacuees.
