Health Disaster Management: Guidelines for Evaluation and Research in the Utstein Style: Executive Summary

Task Force on Quality Control of Disaster Management

Abstract

This document which is originally compiled by the Task Force on Quality Control of Disaster Management is the executive summary of a monograph on disaster management published by an academic journal, "Prehospital and Disaster Medicine (PDM; http://pdm.medicine.wisc.edu)", entitled "Health Disaster Management: Guidelines for Evaluation and Research, (PDM Supplements 2003)", which introduces a structural framework for investigations into the medical and public health aspects of disasters including: a standardized, universal set of definitions; a conceptual model for disasters; indicators and standards; descriptions of 14 basic societal functions bound together by a coordination and control function; and a disaster response template and two research templates. The templates are to be used in the design, conduct, analysis, and reporting of research and/or evaluations of interventions directed at preventing hazards from becoming a disaster-producing event, mitigating the of such an event on the affected society, and/or responses to a disaster. A permission to reproduce the material was granted by one of the corresponding author, M.L. Birnbaum, MD, of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin, U.S.A.