disaster

This is a guest blog by Peter C. Atherton, P.E.

What We Need to Know About Human Disaster Response and Trauma 

There is no doubt that we as leaders and team have been going through a season of much higher fear, anxiety, and trauma with the COVID-19 crisis and the very visual revealing of racial injustice and inequities previously ignored.  

Our stressors are also multifaceted and connected with different concerns.  

On one hand, our concerns are related to health, economics, isolation, and an uncertain and non-uniform re-opening. On the other hand, our concerns are related to seeing large gaps in long-standing social constructs associated with equality, justice, and inclusion.  

Concurrently we begin to work through the “peaks,” medically and in terms of concerns over our organization’s near-term financial health, and as we begin to better listen, understand, and take new actions as citizens and society, the fact is that we will not — and must not — just return to “normal.”  

Between then and now, however, there are things we need to know and steps we need to take to help ease concerns and come out of these periods of crisis stronger, better, and more resilient.  

What We Need to Know 

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