Natural Hazards Center || Evacuation Shelters During a Pandemic: Planning for Staff, Volunteer, and Client Well-Being

Evacuation Shelters During a Pandemic: Planning for Staff, Volunteer, and Client Well-Being

Volunteers serve meals early in the COVID-19 pandemic. Image credit: Shutterstock.

By Joshua Behr, Wie Yusuf, Jennifer L. Whytlaw, Nicole Hutton, Jennifer Marshall and, Kelsey Merlo

Implications for Public Health

The COVID-19 pandemic introduces new considerations that must be addressed to ensure safe evacuation and sheltering, including evacuee care, shelter operations, public messaging, and workforce dynamics.

Shelter staffing and management requires a range of expertise, including social-psychological and clinical skills. This has especially been the case during the COVID-19 pandemic, where the need to limit the spread of infection through distancing, heightened sanitation, and limited social interactions compounds the complexity.

Our CONVERGE COVID-19 Working Group identified issues that can impact the well-being of evacuees in congregate shelters. With input from more than 250 disaster professionals and researchers who participated in our Working Group sessions, we developed insights and knowledge useful for planning and operations in sheltering facilities under pandemic conditions. These takeaways, categorized below, should be fully considered in state and local sheltering planning policies and practices .

Shelter Operations

The number, type, and capacities of shelters can change during pandemics due to the need for social distancing, quarantining, and careful management of at-risk populations. Social distancing and quarantining might require shelter capacity to be adjusted downward, as well as additional sheltering venues to be identified to meet projected demands. Within shelters, internal movement, directional flow, visitation, and the ability to exit and re-enter should also be reconsidered.

Shelter Supplies

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the types and amounts of supplies needed in shelters while simultaneously disrupting supply chains. Higher-level sanitation protocols require additional cleaning supplies, equipment, and training. More disposable products are needed for food preparation, as well as the delivery of medical services. These supplies must be planned for, procured, staged, inventoried, and stored safely. Anticipating shifts in demand for these products and equipment and identifying reliable supply chains ahead of time are necessary.

Infectious Disease Control and Client Care

The pandemic introduces new concerns related to protocols and training for initial and periodic infectious disease screening within shelters. Thought must be given to the setup of isolation areas and how to best staff and secure them. Prescription medication acquisition, distribution, and administration will also require additional planning.

Public Messaging and Communications

Anxiety about COVID-19 exposure in shelters is likely to be heightened, so messaging should effectively communicate risks and mitigation measures along with disaster updates delivered in a calm and reassuring manner. Communications should be tailored to clients who speak English as a second language, and to those who have sensory or cognitive impairments.

Workforce Staffing and Volunteers

The pandemic environment could decrease the number of staff and volunteers available to manage shelters, affecting workplace dynamics. Staff and volunteers have the same concerns about infection as the larger population, so some will be hesitant or unable to work. In some cases, a decline in experienced staff and volunteers could erode the natural continuity that comes from experienced personnel mentoring junior workers in an active shelter environment. Increased work demands also require innovations in work and rest schedules to reduce fatigue and maintain compassion. Attending to these workforce demands necessitates the rethinking of roles, tasks, and schedules to ensure adequate staffing.

Workforce Training

Changes in client care, security, and sanitation protocols mean that new or enhanced certification, training (e.g., functional, cross-training, and infection control), and delivery methods should be considered. Special attention must be paid to personal protective equipment, hygiene, and sanitation. Cleaning practices must be regular and monitored, requiring a compliance and reporting regimen. Staff will need to be familiar with screening and triage protocols to separate ill and vulnerable evacuees from those who are healthy. Additional training on communicating with diverse groups who are under stress might be needed to do this in a safe, respectful way.

Psychological Adjustment

Chronic and acute stressors are part of typical evacuation and sheltering and can be exacerbated in a pandemic environment. Shelter management should consider the longer-term impacts on well-being, workforce productivity, career satisfaction, and mental health that stem from evacuation and sheltering during a pandemic. Enhanced methods for training shelter staff and volunteers to identify and act on mental health issues should be explored, as should the potential of embedding mental health professionals into shelter management teams.

Conclusion

The COVID-19 environment means that planning practices and policies for nearly all aspects of evacuation and congregate sheltering must be revisited. Innovative methods and refined protocols should be developed to address the issues mentioned above. Grappling with the new reality of evacuation and sheltering under a COVID environment is necessary for the protection and well-being of both sheltered populations and sheltering teams.

Suggested Tools

CDC Interim Guidance for General Population Disaster Shelters During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
This document outlines a public health surveillance approach that may be used during a disaster response and reviews principles and practices of disaster surveillance. It provides key concepts and challenges to consider when conducting disaster surveillance.

Hurricane Key Messages: COVID-19 Annex
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
A resource providing examples of public messaging to help people safely prepare, evacuate, and shelter for severe storms while protecting themselves and others from COVID-19.

A QuickGuide to Disaster Workforce Planning during the 2020 Hurricane-Coronavirus Pandemic Season and Beyond
University of South Florida
A guide to assist emergency planners in recruiting and developing a disaster response workforce during compounding disasters.

Keywords: Evacuation Shelter Pandemic Vulnerable Population Staff Volunteer

About the Authors

Joshua G. Behr

Joshua G. Behr is a research associate professor at the Virginia Modeling, Analysis, and Simulation Center at Old Dominion University. Behr’s research focuses on community resilience, catastrophic events, evacuation behavior, recurrent flooding, and the disposition of medically fragile and vulnerable populations in the post-event recovery process. Behr uses this research to forecast storm damage, displaced populations, recovery times, well being of populations, and cost pressure on health systems, in addition to developing indicators of household and community vulnerability in the modeled recovery processes.

Wie Yusuf

Wie Yusuf is a professor of public service in the Strome College of Business at Old Dominion University (ODU). She is the assistant director for the ODU Institute for Coastal Adaptation and Resilience. Yusuf leads a multi-disciplinary research team that studies resilience to climate change, sea level rise, and flooding. This multi-disciplinary team includes researchers from public policy, community engagement, communications, engineering, data science, tourism, and geography. Her research has addressed topics such as regional adaptation readiness, sea level rise policy, public preferences for adaptation solutions, participatory mapping, and community engagement in planning for sea level rise and flooding.

Jennifer L. Whytlaw

Jennifer L. Whytlaw is an assistant professor of applied GIS at Old Dominion University. She is a certified GIS professional with a PhD in geography and more than 16 years of experience working in the geospatial industry. Her work experience has involved working in both private-sector and academic environments. Her current research is focused on utilizing geospatial analyses and visualizations to understand how environmental hazard events influence personal understanding of vulnerabilities within communities. Whytlaw has worked on projects related to environmental management, health equity, hazard mitigation and resilience, emergency management, construction management, geospatial intelligence, transportation, and marine spatial planning.

Nicole S. Hutton

Nicole Hutton is the assistant director of engagement for Old Dominion University's Institute for Coastal Adaptation and Resilience and an associate professor of geography in the Department of Political Science and Geography. Her research explores human-environment interactions across hazard types and emergency management stages. Shriners Hospital for Children had a transformational impact on her early life that resonates in her research with nonprofits and vulnerable populations in hazardous settings. She uses iterative participatory mapping processes to engage stakeholders in community resilience building and risk reduction prioritization activities.

Jennifer Marshall

Jennifer Marshall is an associate professor and interdisciplinary faculty lead at the University of South Florida College of Public Health, Chiles Center, and she serves as the director of planning and evaluation for the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health-funded Sunshine ERC for occupational health, safety and wellness. Her research examines health disparities, social determinants of health, and social services in perinatal home visiting, disability, mental health, substance dependence, and disaster response. Areas of expertise include mixed-methods, community-based, participatory research, and program evaluation. Marshall has led community-based research on systems of care and family supports related to the Zika epidemic, hurricanes, and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Kelsey Merlo

Kelsey Merlo is an assistant professor in the industrial-organizational psychology program at the University of South Florida. Her research captures the day-to-day emotional experience of working as it unfolds in the moment and across time. In particular, Merlo explores the influence of emotions on worker functioning in the moment and the accumulation of emotional experiences to the end of the day. Her research has been published in peer-reviewed outlets (e.g., Current Directions in Psychological Science, Cell, and Journal of Business and Psychology) and featured in popular press outlets like Psychology Today.

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