Health and Disaster Management (2019)

AIDR’s Health and Disaster Management Handbook provides guidance on national principles and practices for health management in disasters in Australia. This handbook outlines the core principles and concepts that underpin how the health system can develop plans to reduce the effects and level of disruption to communities in Australia before, during and after disasters.

Disasters pose great challenges for the health system because of their physical, psychosocial and economic impacts on communities, and in disrupting a system that already has significant demands on its resources. The health system is large and complex and is comprised of a range of disciplines that all act to ensure community wellbeing across Australia.

Concepts such as risk, resilience, mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery are considered. The challenges of areas such as law, ethics, communications and inclusion are also covered. Additionally, the handbook goes through the Australian Health Emergency Response Arrangements (Department of Health and Ageing 2011) to assist in planning and preparedness at all levels in the health system.

The handbook explores how parts of the health system contribute to the management of disasters, specifically, in scenarios where the health sector will be the lead, for example a pandemic or thunderstorm asthma event.

 

PDF’s of all handbooks are freely available to download on the Australian Disaster Resilience Knowledge Hub: https://knowledge.aidr.org.au/collections/handbook-collection/

The Australian Disaster Resilience Handbook Collection:

• provides an authoritative, trusted and freely available source of knowledge about disaster resilience principles in Australia.
• aligns national disaster resilience strategy and policy with practice, by guiding and supporting jurisdictions, agencies and other organisations and individuals in their implementation and adoption.
• highlights and promotes the adoption of good practice in building disaster resilience in Australia.
• builds interoperability between jurisdictions, agencies, the private sector, local businesses and community groups by promoting use of a common language and coordinated, nationally agreed principles.