تأثیر مداخله از نوع کاهش خطر بر میزان آمادگی مقابله با زلزله در بین سالمندان هادیشهر جلفای آذربایجانشرقی در سال 1393

Background: Because of vulnerability of the elders in disasters, preparedness of this group is&nbsp;very important in reducing the damages caused by the earthquake. Therefore, the present study&nbsp;designed and conducted with the purpose of developing interventions to increase earthquake&nbsp;preparedness and risk reduction in the elderly people living in Hadishahr Jolfa City, Iran. Materials and Methods: This study was a quasi-experimental study with pretest, posttest&nbsp;design and a control group. Fifty community dwelling elderly people were selected through&nbsp;simple random sampling method from 2 health centers and randomly allocated to intervention&nbsp;and control groups. Intervention program consisted of educational sessions with slideshows,&nbsp;group discussions, and sending reminder materials to their addresses a week later. The data&nbsp;were collected using the researcher developed preparedness questionnaire consisting of 58&nbsp;items with 4 subscales (communication, environmental, during and after earthquake period).&nbsp;Inferential analyses of data, including analysis of covariance was done by SPSS version 16. Results: The findings showed that scores in all subscales of earthquake preparedness&nbsp;(communication, environment, during and after earthquake) significantly increased after&nbsp;educational intervention (P<0.05). Conclusion: Preparedness programs for disaster risk reduction has a positive effect on the&nbsp;elders&rsquo; preparedness. Thus, similar multimodal preparedness programs should be used more&nbsp;frequently for this vulnerable community citizens.