Public Health Disaster Research Award Program

About the Program: From 2020 to 2024, the Public Health Disaster Research Award Program supported rapid, applied research advancing public health preparedness, response, and resilience in historically underserved and understudied communities across the U.S. territories, rural regions, and Tribal communities.

With funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and National Science Foundation, the Natural Hazards Center ultimately supported 50 research projects across 4 special calls and 2 continuation awards. Awards ranged from $10,000 to $50,000. The Center awarded more than $1.9 million to 216 investigators from 119 separate institutions.

Projects and researchers spanned the continental United States and U.S. territories—including Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and American Samoa—demonstrating the program’s broad reach and sustained impact on public health disaster research. Collectively, the projects examined diverse populations and public health disaster issues across a range of hazard types. For example, teams focused on evacuation and sheltering during Hurricane Maria and the COVID-19 pandemic, the creation of territory-specific social vulnerability indices, analyses of 9-1-1 call patterns in rural Montana, and community-based strategies to strengthen disaster preparedness and resilience among Tribal nations. For more information about the projects, please see the Public Health Research Award Program Overview presentation.

Geographic Locations of Research Projects

Program Outcomes: As documented in our evaluation report and journal publication, the Program successfully achieved its four core objectives by (1) training and mentoring mentoring a diverse next generation of public health disaster researchers, (2) advancing interdisciplinary disaster research, (3) building equitable collaborations with communities and public health practitioners, and (4) translating research findings into actionable public health tools, policies, and practices.

Program Outputs: To learn more about the critical findings produced by this program, please read the published Reports, Community Engagement Briefs, and recorded webinars where awardees presented their results from Call 1, Call 2, Call 3, and Call 4.

Questions?

Please contact the Natural Hazards Center team at haz.research.awards@colorado.edu.

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