Nearly a year after being created by Congress, the National Commission on Children and Disasters held its inaugural meeting last week. The 10-member commission was formed to assess children’s needs in disaster and emergency preparedness, response, and recovery.
Although it has two years to complete the work and present a report of its findings and recommendations, results could come as early as April 2009, according to an October 16 statement by Save the Children. The group’s vice-president of U.S. programs, Mark Shriver, will serve as commission chairman.
"With the number of Presidential disaster declarations rising over the past two decades, and continued accounts and images of children in need, this Commission simply cannot take two years to develop recommendations," Shriver stated. "I'm fully confident that…we will cut through red tape and turf battles."
The meeting comes weeks after national media reported a lack of child-friendly facilities and dangerous conditions for Hurricane Ike’s “littlest evacuees." Editorials in the Washington Post drew attention to the fact that, despite a bevy of measures put into place in recent years for pets, there was a “stunning lack of forethought about or preparation for” evacuating families with children.
Other commission members include Dr. Michael Anderson of Case Western Reserve University, Gregg Lord of the Homeland Security Policy Institute at George Washington University, and Irwin Redlener, Director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness. For a full list of commission members, see the press release.
Jolie Breeden is the lead editor and science communicator for Natural Hazards Center publications. She writes and edits for Research Counts; the Quick Response, Mitigation Matters, Public Health, and Weather Ready Research Award report series; as well as for special projects and publications. Breeden graduated summa cum laude from the University of Colorado Boulder with a bachelor’s degree in journalism.