When thinking of disaster relief on the Gulf Coast, debris removal and building reconstruction usually come to mind. But for Fran Norris, a Dartmouth psychiatry researcher who works for the National Center for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, disaster relief efforts will focus on "people reconstruction" through a psychological impact survey.
This week, researchers will begin to contact the first of 800 interviewees from southern Mississippi who experienced Katrina in the fall of 2005. The research participants will be asked about how they coped with acute and chronic stress, after the disaster.
Collaborating with Scott Coffey from the University of Mississippi Medical Center and Sandro Galea, an epidemiologist researcher from the University of Michigan, Norris will begin contacting Hurricane Katrina victims by phone and in person to collect and understand different experiences since the hurricane.
Norris explained that there are both long-term and short-term responses to disasters, and that research in both areas is still needed.
"There are a couple areas that we have a lot of gaps in," said Norris, describing how many psychiatric services end only months after the initial disaster.
The survey is set up to retrieve information about disaster response on both the community and individual levels. Norris explained that the survey is just one contribution to an overall body of knowledge that will help with disaster relief planning in the future.
"Hopefully, this also becomes part of the long term picture and planning for events like this," Norris said.
Surveys are often limiting in nature and Norris explained that one of the biggest challenges will be actually initiating the interviews. The research team continues to face methodological challenges such as the complexity of finding the right interviewees. To obtain a random sample and provide an accurate representation of the population in Southern Mississippi, researchers will first designate specific regions and then choose interviewees randomly from within each area. This way they will ensure that research participants do not all hail from one specific area affected by the hurricane.
Despite these methodological issues, "from a researcher's point of view those challenges are rewarding," Norris said.
Norris described the difficulties of predicting survey results but she expects a high prevalence of post traumatic stress and depression that are typically associated with such disasters, even years after they occur.
"There's not much interest until [disasters] actually happen," Norris said.
Norris devotes her work to disaster research and seeks to improve state and national response to post-disaster situations. Collaborating with two epidemiologists, she aims to contribute her expertise as a psychiatric researcher.
Norris explained that people turn to a variety of networks on a community, state and national level. She hopes her research will help develop these networks.
"With more information, it's easier to make the case of how to rebuild people and the community," she said.
