Reports of malaria are increasing in many countries and in areas thought free of the disease. One of the factors contributing to the reemergence of malaria is human migration. People move for a number of reasons, including environmental deterioration, economic necessity, conflicts, and natural disasters. These factors are most likely to affect the poor, many of whom live in or near malarious ar...

Heat is the leading weather-related killer in the United States. Although previous research suggests that social influences affect human responses to natural disaster warnings, no studies have examined the social impacts of heat or heat warnings on a population. Here, 201 surveys were distributed in Metropolitan Phoenix to determine the social impacts of the heat warning system, or more specifi...

This study examined the extent of children's and adolescents' psychosocial maladjustment associated with a natural disaster, namely, wildfire. The course of psychopathology was assessed six weeks after a major wildfire destroyed 420 homes. Victims' functioning relative to a comparison group from the same community, matched for age, gender, socioeconomic status, and fire insurance was examined. ...

This year, on March eleventh, the world stood astonished to the most devastating natural disasters ever heard of: the high-scale earthquake followed by a devastating tsunami that destroyed entire cities in Northwest Japan. What followed was reason for much concern, because the nuclear plants of the region had also been damaged, increasing even further the suffering of the people who had just lo...

Recent world events have once again reinforced my belief that we are indeed very fortunate. In March, we watched helplessly as friends, family, and colleagues in Japan were devastated by earthquakes and tsunamis, and continue to watch the saga of a nuclear disaster unfold. Not so long ago, we witnessed the devastation in Haiti, in Australia, and again in New Zealand, as thousands of lives were ...

The effects of stress on mothers' recall for a major hurricane were studied. Stress was objectively defined as low, moderate, or high according to the severity of home damage. This study of 96 mothers was conducted concurrently with L. E. Bahrick, J. F. Parker, R. Fivush, and M. Levitt (1998), allowing the authors to compare child and adult recall as a function of the same stressor. There was a...

The ability to measure emergency preparedness-to predict the likely performance of emergency response systems in future events-is critical for policy analysis in homeland security. Yet it remains difficult to know how prepared a response system is to deal with large-scale incidents, whether it be a natural disaster, terrorist attack, or industrial or transportation accident. This research draws...

Evidence suggests that prenatal maternal stress (PNMS) has long-term effects on several outcomes, yet effects on neuromotor function are relatively unknown. We aimed to determine whether disaster-related PNMS predicts motor functioning in young children and whether timing of exposure and sex of the child moderate these effects. Objective and subjective PNMS levels were assessed among pregnant w...

Children who experienced a highly stressful natural disaster, Hurricane Andrew, were interviewed within a few months of the event, when they were 3-4 years old, and again 6 years later, when they were 9-10 years old. Children were grouped into low, moderate, or high stress groups depending on the severity of the experienced storm. All children were able to recall this event in vivid detail 6 ye...

The present study explored whether ideologically based attributions for why people need public assistance (a) emerge even in the context of an external-uncontrollable cause of need; (b) generalize across different levels of analysis, for example, across different forms of assistance, as well as across different types of claimants (individuals or groups); and explored (c) the role of promised re...