Who Participates in Building Disaster Resilient Communities: A Cluster-Analytic Approach.

CONTEXT: The Los Angeles County Community Disaster Resilience project is a community-based program to improve disaster resilience. We collected baseline measures of resilience-related attitudes and practices among targeted communities prior to the implementation of the intervention. OBJECTIVES: This study identified community disaster resilience behavior patterns and assessed their associations with sociodemographic and social cognitive characteristics. DESIGN: Telephone surveys during summer 2013. SETTING: Sixteen communities in Los Angeles County (2 per service planning area). PARTICIPANTS: The address-based sample of adults (≥18) was selected to be representative of 2010 census tracts in each of the communitiesMAIN OUTCOME MEASURES:: We examined relationships between sociodemographic characteristics, social cognitive factors, and participation in community disaster resilience activities. RESULTS: Three clusters of community resilience behavior patterns emerged. Cluster distribution significantly differed across several sociodemographic and social cognitive factors. Participants who were African American, Hispanic, had higher education, income, self-efficacy, trust in the public health department, civic engagement, and social capital were significantly associated with being in the cluster most active in resilience-building activities. CONCLUSIONS: The results confirm that there are distinct community resilience behavior patterns. These patterns vary according to population characteristics, which supports audience segmentation approaches and developing a range of emergency preparedness programs targeted to the strengths and weaknesses of the different audience segments.

Measuring Outcomes in a Community Resilience Program: A New Metric for Evaluating Results at the Household Level.

Community resilience programs require metrics for evaluation but none exist for measuring outcomes at the household and neighborhood level. OBJECTIVES: We develop and describe a new index, the LACCDR index of community resilience, to examine how resilience varied across communities at baseline, prior to implementation of the Los Angeles County Community Disaster Resilience Project (LACCDR). METHODS: We surveyed 4700 adult residents in the sixteen LACCDR communities in English, Spanish and Korean. Each of the survey domains were selected a priori as outcome indicators aligned to the theoretical levers of community resilience. Survey questions were drawn and adapted from published studies and national surveys. RESULTS: Factor analysis demonstrated five separate factors composed from 18 items and explaining 46.7% of the variance. The factors were characterized as community engagement, emergency supplies, communication with neighbors, civic engagement, and collective efficacy. Baseline results for the 16 communities are provided. CONCLUSIONS: We conclude that the LACCDR community resilience index can be used to measure resilience program outcomes at the neighborhood and household levels.