What Do We Mean by 'Community Resilience'? A Systematic Literature Review of How It Is Defined in the Literature

Dynamic assessment of community resilience in China: empirical surveys from three provinces

Background

Strengthening the construction of community resilience and reducing disaster impacts are on the agenda of the Chinese government. The COVID-19 pandemic could alter the existing community resilience. This study aims to explore the dynamic change trends of community resilience in China and analyze the primary influencing factors of community resilience in the context of COVID-19, as well as construct Community Resilience Governance System Framework in China.

Methods

A community advancing resilience toolkit (CART) was used to conduct surveys in Guangdong, Sichuan, and Heilongjiang provinces in China in 2015 and 2022, with community resilience data and information on disaster risk awareness and disaster risk reduction behaviors of residents collected. The qualitative (in-depth interview) data from staffs of government agencies and communities (n = 15) were pooled to explore Community Resilience Governance System Framework in China. Descriptive statistics analysis and t-tests were used to investigate the dynamic development of community resilience in China. Hierarchical regression analysis was performed to explore the main influencing factors of residential community resilience with such socio-demographic characteristics as gender and age being controlled.

Results

The results indicate that community resilience in China has improved significantly, presenting differences with statistical significance (p < 0.05). In 2015, connection and caring achieved the highest score, while disaster management achieved the highest score in 2022, with resources and transformative potential ranking the lowest in their scores in both years. Generally, residents presented a high awareness of disaster risks. However, only a small proportion of residents that were surveyed had participated in any "community-organized epidemic prevention and control voluntary services" (34.9%). Analysis shows that core influencing factors of community resilience include: High sensitivity towards major epidemic-related information, particular attention to various kinds of epidemic prevention and control warning messages, participation in epidemic prevention and control voluntary services, and formulation of epidemic response plans. In this study, we have constructed Community Resilience Governance System Framework in China, which included community resilience risk awareness, community resilience governance bodies, community resilience mechanisms and systems.

Conclusion

During the pandemic, community resilience in China underwent significant changes. However, community capital was, is, and will be a weak link to community resilience. It is suggested that multi-stages assessments of dynamic change trends of community resilience should be further performed to analyze acting points and core influencing factors of community resilience establishment at different stages.

Organizational and community resilience for COVID-19 and beyond: Leveraging a system for health and social services integration

OBJECTIVE

To examine how a preexisting initiative to align health care, public health, and social services influenced COVID-19 pandemic response.

DATA SOURCES AND STUDY SETTING

In-depth interviews with administrators and frontline staff in health care, public health, and social services in Contra Costa County, California from October, 2020, to May, 2021.

STUDY DESIGN

Qualitative, semi-structured interviews examined how COVID-19 response used resources developed for system alignment prior to the pandemic.

DATA COLLECTION

We interviewed 31 informants including 14 managers in public health, health care, or social services and 17 social needs case managers who coordinated services across these sectors on behalf of patients. An inductive-deductive qualitative coding approach was used to systematically identify recurrent themes.

PRINCIPAL FINDINGS

We identified four distinct components of the county's system alignment capabilities that supported COVID-19 response, including (1) an organizational culture of adaptability fostered through earlier system alignment efforts, which included the ability and willingness to rapidly implement new organizational processes, (2) trusting relationships among organizations based on prior, positive experiences of cross-sector collaboration, (3) capacity to monitor population health of historically marginalized community members, including information infrastructures, data analytics, and population monitoring and outreach, and (4) frontline staff with flexible skills to support health and social care who had built relationships with the highest risk community members.

CONCLUSIONS

Prior investments in aligning systems provided unanticipated benefits for organizational and community resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our results illustrate a pathway for investment in system alignment efforts that build capacity within organizations and relationships between organizations to enhance resilience to crisis. Our findings suggest the usefulness of an integrated concept of organizational and community resilience that understands the resilience of systems of care as a vital resource for community resilience during crisis.

Examining the role of community resilience and social capital on mental health in public health emergency and disaster response: a scoping review

The ability of the public to remain psychologically resilient in the face of public health emergencies and disasters (such as the COVID-19 pandemic) is a key factor in the effectiveness of a national response to such events. Community resilience and social capital are often perceived as beneficial and ensuring that a community is socially and psychologically resilient may aid emergency response and recovery. This review presents a synthesis of literature which answers the following research questions: How are community resilience and social capital quantified in research?; What is the impact of community resilience on mental wellbeing?; What is the impact of infectious disease outbreaks, disasters and emergencies on community resilience and social capital?; and, What types of interventions enhance community resilience and social capital?A scoping review procedure was followed. Searches were run across Medline, PsycInfo, and EMBASE, with search terms covering both community resilience and social capital, public health emergencies, and mental health. 26 papers met the inclusion criteria.The majority of retained papers originated in the USA, used a survey methodology to collect data, and involved a natural disaster. There was no common method for measuring community resilience or social capital. The association between community resilience and social capital with mental health was regarded as positive in most cases. However, we found that community resilience, and social capital, were initially negatively impacted by public health emergencies and enhanced by social group activities.Several key recommendations are proposed based on the outcomes from the review, which include: the need for a standardised and validated approach to measuring both community resilience and social capital; that there should be enhanced effort to improve preparedness to public health emergencies in communities by gauging current levels of community resilience and social capital; that community resilience and social capital should be bolstered if areas are at risk of disasters or public health emergencies; the need to ensure that suitable short-term support is provided to communities with high resilience in the immediate aftermath of a public health emergency or disaster; the importance of conducting robust evaluation of community resilience initiatives deployed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Critical examination of resilience and resistance in African American families: Adaptive capacities to navigate toxic oppressive upstream waters

African American families navigate not only everyday stressors and adversities but also unique sociocultural stressors (e.g., "toxic upstream waters" like oppression). These adverse conditions are consequences of the historical vestiges of slavery and Jim Crow laws, often manifested as inequities in wealth, housing, wages, employment, access to healthcare, and quality education. Despite these challenges, African American families have developed resilience using strength-based adaptive coping strategies, to some extent, to filter these waters. To advance the field of resilience research, we focused on the following questions: (1) what constitutes positive responses to adversity?; (2) how is resilience defined conceptually and measured operationally?; (3) how has the field of resilience evolved?; (4) who defines what, when, and how responses are manifestations of resilience, instead of, for example, resistance? How can resistance, which at times leads to positive adaptations, be incorporated into the study of resilience?; and (5) are there case examples that demonstrate ways to address structural oppression and the pernicious effects of racism through system-level interventions, thereby changing environmental situations that sustain toxic waters requiring acts of resilience to survive and thrive? We end by exploring how a re-conceptualization of resilience requires a paradigm shift and new methodological approaches to understand ways in which preventive interventions move beyond focusing on families' capacity to navigate oppression and target systems and structures that maintain these toxic waters.

Insights from China: understanding the impact of community resilience and government trust in psychological resilience and anxiety during COVID-19

Background

COVID-19 has the potential to greatly impact an individual mental well-being. However, an individual's psychological resilience, combined with support from their community and government disaster relief efforts can aid individuals in confronting crises with a positive mindset. The purpose of this study is to investigate how individuals, across three dimensions of individual resilience perception, community resilience perception, and government trust perception, mitigate individual anxiety during COVID-19.

Methods

This study employed an online survey method that was not restricted by geographical location. Data collection took place from January 2022 to June 2022, and the valid questionnaires covered all 31 provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities in China. The assessment of community resilience was conducted employing the Conjoint Community Resilience Assessment Measure-10 (CCRAM-10). Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was also used to examine the relationship between community resilience, government trust, individual psychological resilience, and anxiety.

Results

The SEM results reveal that individual psychological resilience is significantly negatively correlated with anxiety (b = -0.099, p < 0.001), while there is a significant positive correlation between community resilience perception (b = 0.403, p < 0.001) and government trust (b = 0.364, p < 0.001) with individual psychological resilience. Furthermore, government trust perception enhances psychological resilience, consequently reducing anxiety (b = -0.036, p < 0.001). The results also revealed that women and increasing age had a mitigating effect on individual anxiety during COVID-19.

Conclusion

Individual's mental state is influenced on multiple dimensions during COVID-19. Not only can individual psychological resilience better cope with anxiety, but support at the community and government dimensions has a significant impact on individual psychology. These resources can enhance the resilience of both individuals and communities, helping them better cope with stress and difficulties.

The Chronic Cholera Situation in Africa: Why Are African Countries Unable to Tame the Well-Known Lion?

Seven years to the Global Taskforce on Cholera Control's target of reducing cholera cases and deaths by 90% by 2030, Africa continues to experience a high incidence of the disease. In the last 20 years, more than 2.6 million cases and 60 000 deaths of the disease have been recorded, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa. Case Fatality Ratio remains consistently above the WHO-recommended 1% with a yearly average of 2.2%. Between 1 January 2022 and 16 July 2023, fourteen African countries reported 213 443 cases and 3951 deaths (CFR, 1.9%) of the disease. In this perspective article, based on available literature and the authors' field experiences in Africa, we discuss the underlying reasons for the sustained transmission of the disease. We posit that in addition to the well-known risk factors for the disease, the chronic cholera situation in Africa is due to the poor socioeconomic development status, weak household and community resilience, low literacy levels, weak capacity of African countries to implement the 2005 International Health Regulation and the pervasively weak health system on the continent. Stemming this tide requires good leadership, partnership, political commitment, and equity in access to health services, water, and sanitation. Therefore, we recommend that African governments and stakeholders recognize and approach cholera prevention and control from the long-term development lens and leverage the current cholera emergency preparedness and response efforts on the continent to strengthen the affected countries' health, water, and sanitation systems. We call on international organizations such as WHO and the Africa Centres for Diseases Control to support African governments in scaling up research and innovations aimed at better characterizing the epidemiology of cholera and developing evidence-based, context-specific, and innovative strategies for its prevention and control. These recommendations require long-term multisectoral and multidisciplinary approaches.

Resilience analysis of the local communities from a political economy perspective in Zanjan, Iran

Local community resilience has been a solution to reduce human and natural origin damages for several decades in global studies. Various studies have addressed different aspects of resilience. However, using the results of this research to create local community resilience has always faced limitations. In fact, the neglected role of political economy in these studies has caused the application of policies and strategies resulting from these studies to face challenge to create local communities' resilience. Therefore, the aim of this research is to evaluate how political economy affects the resilience of local communities. The research method is mixed and qualitative analysis was used to analyze the impact of political economy on resilience and quantitative analysis was used to measure the extent of resilience. The research has investigated the impact of political economy on the aspects of resilience and measured the extent of resilience from economic, social, institutional, environmental, and physical aspects by selecting the central part of Zanjan. The results of the research show that political economy has caused the lack of role-playing of local communities in resilience creation. In fact, policy-making influenced by political economy has led to the formation of a rent economy, a top-down and centralized management system, and this was the main obstacle in creating resilient local communities directly and indirectly through the reduction of the role of local institutions, spatial segregation, housing rent, reduction of social capital, increasing greenhouse gases and poverty. Therefore, we need a transition from the current institutional environment take steps towards evolution, dynamism, and institutional transformation to create local communities' resilience in order to create a resilient local society.

Resilient communities? A qualitative interview study on sustaining a community project for health promotion among socially disadvantaged women during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic

OBJECTIVES

With the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 a global pandemic impacted on health promotion, overlapping and hindering efforts to overcome the worldwide pandemic of lacking physical activity (PA). Nationwide lockdowns, the closure of public facilities and sports venues, made it significantly more difficult to sustain community-run PA projects. In our case study, we explore (a) under which circumstances a community-basedhealth promotion project can be maintained during crisis and (b) what resilience capacities are important for community project coordinators to deal with those aggravating circumstances.

METHODS

Our case study looks at a community-based project called BIG, an exercise promotion project for women in difficult life circumstances. The case study was conducted between July 2021 and January 2022 with six municipalities implementing the project. Following a triangulation approach, we used minutes from short exchanges (n=17) with community project coordinators, information brochures about current exercise classes (n=6) and semi-structured qualitative interviews with project coordinators (n=6). All data were analyzed using the framework approach.

RESULTS

All sites showed a high level of willingness to adapt to the pandemic situation and to maintain the project as best as possible. Findings highlight that coordinators whose work routine was characterized by intense relationship management with participants and trainers demonstrated higher levels of adaptive and absorptive capacities on an individual level than coordinators of those communities with less social cohesion. At a community level, important resources for strengthening adaptive and absorptive resilience capacities were job security of the coordinators, sufficient financial resources to adapt classes to changing circumstances, and a supportive organizational climate in the coordinators' working environment to allow them to react flexibly according to current pandemic regulations.

CONCLUSION

Despite high resilience capacities especially on an individual level, the low-threshold nature of the project could not be maintained at a pre-pandemic level. For many women, participation in the project was no longer possible at times. Awareness should be raised in communities that PA promotion programs are crucial to strengthening physical and mental health, even in times of crisis. It seems necessary to find permanent funding options for such programs, to integrate them permanently into municipal structures.

The resilience of Jewish communities living in the diaspora: a scoping review

Introduction

Throughout history, Jewish communities have been exposed to collectively experienced traumatic events. Little is known about the role that the community plays in the impact of these traumatic events on Jewish diaspora people. This scoping review aims to map the concepts of the resilience of Jewish communities in the diaspora and to identify factors that influence this resilience.

Methods

We followed the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) methodology. Database searches yielded 2,564 articles. Sixteen met all inclusion criteria. The analysis was guided by eight review questions.

Results

Community resilience of the Jewish diaspora was often described in terms of coping with disaster and struggling with acculturation. A clear definition of community resilience of the Jewish diaspora was lacking. Social and religious factors, strong organizations, education, and communication increased community resilience. Barriers to the resilience of Jewish communities in the diaspora included the interaction with the hosting country and other communities, characteristics of the community itself, and psychological and cultural issues.

Discussion

Key gaps in the literature included the absence of quantitative measures of community resilience and the lack of descriptions of how community resilience affects individuals' health-related quality of life. Future studies on the interaction between community resilience and health-related individual resilience are warranted.

Changes in Quality of Life Following SARS-CoV-2 Infection Among Jewish and Arab Populations in Israel: A Cross-Sectional Study

Objectives: The long-term impact of COVID-19 on health inequalities is under-researched. We investigated changes in health-related inequalities following SARS-CoV-2 infection between the Jewish majority and the Arab/Druze minority in Israel. Methods: Patients with a positive SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR test processed from one of the Northern-Israeli government hospitals between 03/2021 and 05/2022 were invited to participate. We collected socio-demographic, COVID-19-related, and health-related quality of life (HRQoL) information using a validated questionnaire. We compared pre- and post COVID-19 HRQoL changes between Jews and Arabs/Druze, up to 12+ months post-infection using an adjusted linear regression model. Results: Among the 881 included participants the average post-COVID HRQoL score was lower among Arabs/Druze than Jews (0.83 vs. 0.88; p = 0.005). Until 12 months post-infection, HRQoL changes were similar for Arabs/Druze and Jews. After 12 months, HRQoL dropped significantly more among Arabs/Druze than among Jews (0.11 points difference between the groups; p = 0.014), despite adjusting for socioeconomic variables. Conclusion: 12 months post-infection, COVID-19 affected the HRQoL of Arabs/Druze more than Jews, with the gap not fully explained by socio-economic differences. The COVID-19 pandemic may widen pre-existing long-term health inequalities.

An Analysis of Risk and Protective Factors Associated with Cyber-Dating Violence Victimization of Adolescent Girls: An Ecological Perspective

Cyber-dating violence (cyber-DV) is a prevalent issue among adolescent girls that can have negative consequences including post-traumatic stress symptoms and suicidal ideations and attempts. In the aim to reduce its prevalence and impacts, researchers are increasingly relying on the identification of risk and protective factors associated with cyber-DV across multiple ecological contexts. The current study aimed to examine the influence of individual (e.g., dissociation), interpersonal (e.g., offline forms of dating violence) and community level (e.g., community support) factors associated with the cyber-DV victimization of adolescent girls. A sample of 456 adolescent girls (M = 16.17 years old, SD = 1.28) was recruited online to complete a survey. At the individual level, emotion dysregulation, dissociative symptoms, post-traumatic stress symptoms and resilience were measured. Offline forms of DV and a history of child sexual abuse were assessed at the interpersonal level. Finally, at the community level, community support, community resilience, neighborhood material and social disadvantage were evaluated. Results from a hierarchical logistic regression indicated that exposure to offline DV namely verbal-emotional DV, sexual DV, threats, as well as living in neighborhoods with lower levels of social disadvantage were significantly associated with an increased risk of cyber-DV victimization. Cyber-DV preventative intervention efforts should focus on incorporating cyber-DV specific modules and activities into offline DV prevention and intervention programs as to reduce the likelihood of adolescents suffering both forms of DV and their associated repercussions.

Understanding How Community Wellbeing is Affected by Climate Change: Evidence From a Systematic Literature Review

Social science studies view community wellbeing to be a cumulative construct of multiple dimensions which include social, economic, environmental, physical, political, health, education indicators and more. The study of community wellbeing is compounded by climate change as it increases the frequency of disasters affecting all dimensions of community wellbeing. It becomes crucial for communities to build community resilience and address the impact on community wellbeing in the context of Disaster Risk Reduction and sustainable development. This systematic literature aimed to understand how community wellbeing is affected by climate change. It analysed 23 papers from Scopus, Web of Science, ProQuest, and Google Scholar, following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) method, to address three research questions: (i) how do climate change scholars understand community wellbeing, (ii) how community wellbeing is affected by specific climate change factors/conditions and the nature of impact, and (iii) how the impact on community wellbeing as a result of climate change is being addressed. The study found that climate change scholars hold mixed and multiple views or understanding of community wellbeing and climate change led to mental stress decreasing community wellbeing. The solutions to improve community wellbeing in the context of climate change suggests that adaptation should be the main policy instrument supplemented by mitigation strategies and recommends building a vibrant research culture in wellbeing and climate studies, among others. This review provides insights into the complex relationship between community wellbeing and climate change and identifies areas for future research and policy development.

Community resilience and continuous challenges: A qualitative analysis of the functioning of communities in the aftermath of persistent and ordinary stressors

The study aimed at investigating the functioning of communities in the aftermath of continuous challenges and identifying standards for describing resilient paths based on the perspective of community members. A qualitative investigation was carried out in 11 territorial communities of Salento, in southern Italy. Fifty-two key informants were interviewed and interview transcripts were submitted to thematic content analysis through Atlas.Ti. Overall, the interviewees reported that their communities suffer from a varied set of complex and interrelated adverse circumstances that have increased their vulnerability. The respondents have a clear idea about the community strengths and weaknesses that either allow or impede adaptive responses, though they did not understand the latter in separation from the slow-onset events that have contributed to causing them. On the basis of findings, resilient paths facing continuous challenges can be described as trajectories of functioning allowing the communities to survive and progress through adaptive and maladaptive responses.

Environmental mastery and purpose of life during COVID-19-related lockdown: A study deepening the role of personal and community resilience

COVID-19 outbreak and the measures needed to contain its first wave of contagion produced broad changes in citizens' daily lives, routines, and social opportunities, putting their environmental mastery and purpose of life at risk. However, these measures produced different impacts across citizens and communities. Building on this, the present study addresses citizens' understanding of the rationale for COVID-19-related protective measures and their perception of their own and their community's resilience as protective dimensions to unravel the selective effect of nationwide lockdown orders. An online questionnaire was administered to Italian citizens during Italian nationwide lockdown. Two moderation models were performed using the Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) path analysis. The results show that the understanding of the rationale for lockdown only associated with citizens' purpose of life and that it represented a risk factor rather than a protective one. Furthermore, the interaction effects were significant only when community resilience was involved. That is, personal resilience did not show the expected moderation effect, while community resilience did. However, the latter varied between being either full or partial depending on the dependent variable. In light of the above, the theoretical and practical implications of these results will be discussed.

An investigation of the level of burnout and resilience among hospital based nurse managers after COVID 19 - A cross-sectional questionnaire-based study

AIM

We aim to investigate burnout and resilience among hospital based nurse managers post COVID-19 in order to suggest appropriate person-centred leadership support.

BACKGROUND

Nurse leaders are central to establishing safe and caring environments for patients and staff. Therefore, their own wellbeing is crucial, particular in times of crisis where they must provide support and guidance.

METHODS

Cross-sectional questionnaire included ward managers. Data collected were burnout inventory, brief resilience score and demographic data. To analyse data, we used descriptive statistics.

RESULTS

51.2% answered the questionnaire. Of those, 32.3% displayed symptoms of high personal burnout and 29% of work-related burnout. 6.5% showed signs of high employee-related burnout. As a group, ward managers showed moderate to high resilience.

CONCLUSION

Personal and work-related burnout was highly prevalent among ward managers. Results suggest that the cause of their burnout symptoms cannot be attributed to low individual resilience. We thus suggest a shift in focus from strengthening individual leadership resilience to the establishment of healthful and resilient cultures in accordance with person-centred leadership.

IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING MANAGEMENT

Person-centred leadership has the potential to shift the focus from the resilience of individual leaders to that of collective responsibility for creating a healthful and resilient culture.

The selective effect of lockdown experience on citizens' perspectives: A multilevel, multiple informant approach to personal and community resilience during COVID-19 pandemic

In the face of the first wave of COVID-19 contagion, citizens all over the world experienced concerns for their safety and health, as well as prolonged lockdowns - which brought about limitations but also unforeseen opportunities for personal growth. Broad variability in these psychological responses to such unprecedented experiences emerged. This study addresses this variability by investigating the role of personal and community resilience. Personal resilience, collective resilience, community disaster management ability, provided information by local authorities, and citizens' focus on COVID-19-related personal concerns and lockdown-related opportunities for personal growth were detected through an online questionnaire. Multilevel modelling was run with data from 3,745 Italian citizens. The potential of personal resilience as a driver for individuals to overcome adverse situations with positive outcomes was confirmed. Differently, the components of community resilience showed more complex paths, highlighting the need to pay more attention to its role in the face of far-reaching adverse events which hardly test individuals' as well as communities' adaptability and agency skills. The complexities linked to the multi-component and system-specific nature of resilience, as well as potential paths towards making the most out of citizens' and communities' ones, emerge. The theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

What is 'community resilience'? Responding to COVID-19 in rural Zimbabwe

Based on real-time recording and reflection of responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, this article identifies the features of ‘community resilience’ across sites in rural Zimbabwe. The findings confirm the importance of local knowledge, social networks and communication, as highlighted in the literature. In addition, a number of other aspects are emphasised, including the importance of adaptable livelihoods, innovation and collective learning. Flexible adaptation was especially important for responding to lockdowns, as livelihoods had to be reconfigured in response to public health measures. Meanwhile, innovation and shared learning was vital for generating local treatment responses to the disease. In the Zimbabwe context, these adaptation and innovation capabilities emerge from a particular historical experience where resilience in the face of harsh economic conditions and in the absence of state support has been generated over years. This is often a more resigned coping than a positive, empowering, transformational form of resilience. While adaptation, innovation and shared learning capabilities proved useful during the pandemic, they are not evenly spread, and there is no singular ‘community’ around which resilience emerges. The article therefore argues against seeing ‘community resilience’ as the magic bullet for disaster preparedness and response in the context of pandemics. Instead, the highly differentiated local practices of adaptation, innovation and shared learning—across gender, age and wealth differences—should be seen as an important complement to public, state-led support in health emergencies and so are part of a wider, plural health system.

What does community resilience mean in the context of trauma-informed communities? A scoping review

Several communities are implementing trauma-informed, community-level approaches focused on addressing/preventing adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), yet most community resilience definitions from published articles are based on acute traumas. This scoping review aims to determine how community resilience is defined and operationalized within the context of chronic/complex traumas.

METHODS

We performed a rigorous, comprehensive literature search using multiple databases.

RESULTS

The 38 included articles addressed multiple types of chronic traumas, including historical trauma, poverty, minority stress, mass incarceration, and ACEs. A variety of definitions of community resilience were cited, several of which stressed the ability to thrive despite risk factors and the safety and wellbeing of residents. Few articles operationalized community resilience within the context of ACEs, suggesting significant gaps in the literature.

CONCLUSION

This review can serve as an important building block to develop expanded definitions of community resilience for chronic traumas and assist communities in promoting community-wide responses to ACEs.

Psychometric properties of the Korean adaptation of the communities advancing resilience toolkit (CART) assessment survey

AIMS

This study aimed to establish a cross-cultural adaptation of the Communities Advancing Resilience Toolkit (CART) assessment survey for Korean communities (K-CART) and evaluated its psychometric properties of K-CART.

DESIGN

A cross-sectional study design was used.

METHODS

A forward and backward translation of the CART was conducted. The psychometric properties of K-CART were evaluated with test-retest reliability, internal consistency, content validity and construct validity. A field study was conducted involving 315 older adults in Pohang city, South Korea from January to March, 2019. Two versions of K-CART were analysed, based on the four-factor and the expanded five-factor K-CART.

RESULTS

The test-retest reliability and internal consistency were acceptable (intraclass consistency coefficient = .90). The consistency reliability was satisfactory (Cronbach's α = 0.91). The content validity index (CVI) was found to be acceptable; wherein the item-CVI and scale-CVI were both 0.95. Confirmatory factor analysis confirmed that the construct validity of the expanded K-CART with five factors reached a more acceptable model fit (χ² /df = 2.27, CFI = 0.89, TLI = 0.86, RMESA = 0.05).

Die „gesunde Kommune“ im Lichte „großer Wenden“ – ein sozialökologisch fundiertes Ziel kommunaler Gesundheitsförderung (KoGeFö)

Hintergrund

In Kommunen wird die Gesundheit der Bewohner*innen durch Lebensumstände geschützt, gefördert oder gefährdet. Kommunale Gesundheitsförderung (KoGeFö) findet in und mit der Kommune statt. In der Kommune konzentrieren sich Programme und Maßnahmen auf Endpunkte der Morbidität und Mortalität. Die Krankheitslast soll reduziert, sowie die individuelle Lebensqualität gestärkt werden. Mit der Kommune will Gesundheitsförderung die „gesunde Kommune“ entwickeln.

Fragestellung

Wann ist eine Kommune „gesund“? Welche Absichten werden in der Gesundheitsförderung mit der Kommune jenseits von Programmen verfolgt, die auf die Reduktion der Inzidenz und Prävalenz nicht-ansteckender Erkrankungen zielen, indem sie die Bewohner*innen motivieren und unterstützen, sich gesundheitsfördernd zu verhalten?

Material und Methoden

Vor dem Hintergrund „großer gesellschaftlicher Herausforderungen“ und mit Rückgriff auf sozialökologische Ansätze wird erörtert, was eine „gesunde Kommune“ ausmacht, worauf die Gesundheitsförderung mit der Kommune zielt.

Ergebnisse

Die „gesunde Kommune“ entwickelt sich in der intersektoralen Zusammenarbeit von Akteur*innen der Politik, von Verwaltungseinheiten, der Zivilgesellschaft und der Bewohner*innen. Die „gesunde Kommune“ ist als faire Umgebung gestaltet. Sie öffnet den Einzelnen Möglichkeitsräume für dessen Handeln und gewährt Verwirklichungschancen für persönlich wichtige Ziele.

Schlussfolgerung

Die bevorzugte sozialökologische Perspektive schärft den Blick für die dynamische Interaktion von Umwelt- und Personenfaktoren. Mit Fairness, Möglichkeitsräumen und Verwirklichungschancen sind drei Kriterien benannt, die sich als Gradmesser für den Endpunkt „gesunde Kommune“ einer Gesundheitsförderung mit der Kommune eignen.

Food Security Challenges and Resilience during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Corner Store Communities in Washington, D.C

The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbates the complexities of food inequity. As one of the social determinants of health, food insecurity significantly impacts overall health across the life course. Guided by the Getting to Equity Framework, this qualitative community-engaged participatory project examines the impact of the pandemic on food security among adults in Washington, DC. Semi-structured interviews (n = 79) were conducted by trained community health workers between November 2020 and December 2021 at corner stores. Data analysis was performed using thematic network analysis in NVivo. Results are grouped into four key themes: (1) impact of the pandemic on food access, including expanded services and innovative solutions to meet needs; (2) coping and asset-based strategies at the individual and community level; (3) sources of information and support, and (4) impact of the pandemic on health and well-being. The importance of lived experience research in public health is increasingly recognized as an innovative approach that offers benefits through community engagement and empowerment.

Resilience and Systems—A Review

This paper presents, from a systems orientation, a review of the resilience literature since its emergence as an ecological concept in academic parlance in 1973. It argues that much of the resilience literature covers existing ground in that existing engineering systems stability ideas are being reinvented. The review follows modern control systems theory as the comparison framework, where each system, irrespective of its disciplinary association, is represented in terms of inputs, state, and outputs. Modern control systems theory is adopted because of its cohesiveness and universality. The review reveals that resilience can be thought of in terms of adaptive systems and adaptation, where the system has the ability to respond to perturbations and changes through passive and active feedback mechanisms—returning the system state or system form to a starting position or transitioning to another suitable state or form. This systematic and cross-disciplinary review offers the potential for a greater understanding of resilience and the elimination of overlap in the literature, particularly related to terminology.

Building community resilience in a context of climate change: The role of social capital

Social capital is considered important for resilience across social levels, including communities, yet insights are scattered across disciplines. This meta-synthesis of 187 studies examines conceptual and empirical understandings of how social capital relates to resilience, identifying implications for community resilience and climate change practice. Different conceptualisations are highlighted, yet also limited focus on underlying dimensions of social capital and proactive types of resilience for engaging with the complex climate change challenge. Empirical insights show that structural and socio-cultural aspects of social capital, multiple other factors and formal actors are all important for shaping the role of social capital for guiding resilience outcomes. Thus, finding ways to work with these different elements is important. Greater attention on how and why outcomes emerge, interactions between factors, approaches of formal actors and different socio-cultural dimensions will advance understandings about how to nurture social capital for resilience in the context of climate change.

Technology as a Double-Edged Sword: Understanding Life Experiences and Coping With COVID-19 in India

The two waves of COVID-19 in India have had severe consequences for the lives of people. The Indian State-imposed various regulatory mechanisms like lockdowns, encouraged remote work, online teaching in academic institutions, and enforced adherence to the COVID protocols. The use of various technologies especially digital/online technologies not only helped to adapt to the "new normal" and cope with the disruptions in pursuing everyday activities but also to manage one's well-being. However, the availability and accessibility of digital technologies to various sections of the population were not uniform. This paper reports a series of three studies examining the nature of pandemic stress, the impact of technology use on people's emotional well-being during turbulent times, and the effects of technology use on psychological resources like resilience, self-efficacy, motivation to work, and emotional well-being. The differences in the residential background (Urban/Rural) and SES (Low/High) in the extent of the use of technology and strength of psychological resources were assessed. The findings indicated that the most common causes of concern included worrying about family, friends, partners, fears of getting and giving the viral infection to someone; frustration and or boredom; and changes in normal sleep patterns. It was noted that technology was a double-edged sword and created barriers as well as opportunities for the people. Also, self-efficacy mediated the relationship between the use of technology and emotional wellbeing. The results have policy implications for building resilient communities in the post COVID period.

Developing Community Disaster Resilience in the Lembang Fault Area, Indonesia: Lessons Learned from Japanese Experience

Having experienced large-scale disasters between 2004 and 2006, the fatalities due to large-scale disasters in 2018 in Indonesia were still high. In contrast, community disaster resilience (CDR) and disaster risk management (DRM) in Japan have been continuously improved. Thus, there is a need to develop CDR for supporting DRM in Indonesia by learning from the Japanese experience, particularly in a disaster-prone area without large-scale disaster experience. This research was a pilot project on the development of CDR in Indonesia. The case study was Lembang Fault area, which is a geologic hazard-prone area. People’s perception was collected using structured interviews, while demographic and local economic data were acquired from official statistical publications. Satellite images were utilized to acquire the imageries of natural and built environment, as well as land use/land cover and its changes, between 2019 and 2021. Based on CDR assessment in the Lembang Fault area, the levels of people’s participation and capacity on DRM were low. This may be caused by the low level of training and education, linking of social capital and past disaster experience, as well as the inability of the people to interpret the symbols in indigenous knowledge. Moreover, government interventions on DRM and land administration are required to develop CDR in the Lembang Fault area. Organized community development is expected rather than to solely involve universities and NGOs. Furthermore, strategies to develop economic resilience are needed to allow the community to bounce back from future disaster. Finally, baseline data should be collected and managed to develop DRM strategy and CDR.

The Central Arizona Conservation Alliance Programs: Use of Social Media and App-Supported Community Science for Landscape-Scale Habitat Restoration, Governance Support, and Community Resilience-Building

Land managers are currently faced with a nexus of challenges, both ecological and social, when trying to govern natural open spaces. While social media has led to many challenges for effective land management and governance, the technology has the potential to support key activities related to habitat restoration, awareness-raising for policy changes, and increased community resilience as the impacts of increased use and climate change become more apparent. Through the use of a case study examining the work of the Central Arizona Conservation Alliance’s social media ambassadorship and its app-supported community science projects, we examine the potential and realized positive impact that technology such as social media and smartphone apps can create for land managers and surrounding communities.

Which urban communities are susceptible to COVID-19? An empirical study through the lens of community resilience

Background

After the lockdown of Wuhan on January 23, 2020, the government used community-based pandemic prevention and control as the core strategy to fight the pandemic, and explored a set of standardized community pandemic prevention measures that were uniformly implemented throughout the city. One month later, the city announced its first lists of “high-risk” communities and COVID-19-free communities. Under the standardized measures of pandemic prevention and mitigation, why some communities showed a high degree of resilience and effectively avoided escalation, while the situation spun out of control in other communities? This study investigated: 1) key factors that affect the effective response of urban communities to the pandemic, and 2) types of COVID-19 susceptible communities.

Methods

This study employs the crisp-set qualitative comparative analysis method to explore the influencing variables and possible causal condition combination paths that affect community resilience during the pandemic outbreak. Relying on extreme-case approach, 26 high-risk communities and 14 COVID-19 free communities were selected as empirical research subjects from the lists announced by Wuhan government. The community resilience assessment framework that evaluates the communities’ capacity on pandemic prevention and mitigation covers four dimensions, namely spatial resilience, capital resilience, social resilience, and governance resilience, each dimension is measured by one to three variables.

Results

The results of measuring the necessity of 7 single-condition variables found that the consistency index of “whether the physical structure of the community is favorable to virus transmission” reached 0.9, which constitutes a necessary condition for COVID-19 susceptible communities. By analyzing the seven condition configurations with high row coverage and unique coverage in the obtained complex solutions and intermediate solutions, we found that outbreaks are most likely to occur in communities populated by disadvantaged populations. However, if lacking spatial-, capital-, and governance resilience, middle-class and even wealthy communities could also become areas where COVID-19 spreads easily.

Conclusions

Three types of communities namely vulnerable communities, alienated communities, and inefficient communities have lower risk resilience. Spatial resilience, rather than social resilience, constitutes the key influencing factor of COVID-19-susceptible communities, and the dual deficiencies of social resilience and governance resilience are the common features of these communities.

The community resilience measurement throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond -an empirical study based on data from Shanghai, Wuhan and Chengdu

Against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is widespread agreement in the field of public health that community resilience should be maintained and strengthened. However, there are significant differences in the pandemic prevention effects between different communities in different areas. To explore the main influencing factors on community resilience and the magnitude of their impact during the pandemic, this study collected 650 valid questionnaires from Shanghai, Wuhan and Chengdu by using the Communities Advancing Resilience Toolkit Assessment Survey (CART). Data collection was conducted from February to March 2020 when this three cities activated a Level One public health emergency response. The data were analyzed by using multiple linear regression analysis and structural equation model. Results indicate that: (1) Domains such as Information and Communication, and Connection and Caring scored higher, while Disaster Management, Resources and Transformative Potential scored lower; (2) A community got higher resilience scores if it took more effective measures to prevent and control the pandemic(Shanghai > Chengdu > Wuhan), people within the community participated more actively in disaster risk reduction activities and activities of volunteer responder groups, and people were more closely connected with the community; (3) Variables such as the participation in affiliated volunteer responder groups, and community disaster risk reduction activities exerted the biggest impact on community resilience. Therefore, it is urgent to establish a community-based, resilience-centered framework of community resilience in the post-pandemic era. This framework will strengthen a community's capacity to cope with disasters and risks.

Oceans and society: feedbacks between ocean and human health

The concentration of human population along coastlines has far-reaching effects on ocean and societal health. The oceans provide benefits to humans such as food, coastal protection and improved mental well-being, but can also impact negatively via natural disasters. At the same time, humans influence ocean health, for example, via coastal development or through environmental stewardship. Given the strong feedbacks between ocean and human health there is a need to promote desirable interactions, while minimising undesirable interactions. To this end, we articulate two scenarios for 2030. First, Business-as-Usual, named 'Command and (out of) Control', focuses on the anticipated future based on our current trajectory. Second, a more sustainable scenario called 'Living and Connecting', emphasises the development of interactions between oceans and society consistent with achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. We describe a potential pathway to achieving the 'Living and Connecting' scenario, centred on improving marine citizenship, achieving a more equitable distribution of power among stakeholders, and more equitable access to resources and opportunities. The constituent actions of this pathway can be categorised into four groups: (i) improved approaches to science and health communication that account for society's diverse values, beliefs and worldviews, (ii) a shift towards more trusted relationships among stakeholders to enable two-way knowledge exchange, (iii) economic incentives that encourage behavioural changes necessary for achieving desired sustainability outcomes, and (iv) stronger regulations that simultaneously focus on ocean and human health. We contend that these changes will provide improved outcomes for both oceans and society over the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11160-021-09669-5.

Oceans and society: feedbacks between ocean and human health

The concentration of human population along coastlines has far-reaching effects on ocean and societal health. The oceans provide benefits to humans such as food, coastal protection and improved mental well-being, but can also impact negatively via natural disasters. At the same time, humans influence ocean health, for example, via coastal development or through environmental stewardship. Given the strong feedbacks between ocean and human health there is a need to promote desirable interactions, while minimising undesirable interactions. To this end, we articulate two scenarios for 2030. First, Business-as-Usual, named 'Command and (out of) Control', focuses on the anticipated future based on our current trajectory. Second, a more sustainable scenario called 'Living and Connecting', emphasises the development of interactions between oceans and society consistent with achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. We describe a potential pathway to achieving the 'Living and Connecting' scenario, centred on improving marine citizenship, achieving a more equitable distribution of power among stakeholders, and more equitable access to resources and opportunities. The constituent actions of this pathway can be categorised into four groups: (i) improved approaches to science and health communication that account for society's diverse values, beliefs and worldviews, (ii) a shift towards more trusted relationships among stakeholders to enable two-way knowledge exchange, (iii) economic incentives that encourage behavioural changes necessary for achieving desired sustainability outcomes, and (iv) stronger regulations that simultaneously focus on ocean and human health. We contend that these changes will provide improved outcomes for both oceans and society over the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11160-021-09669-5.

Social Capital, Technological Empowerment, and Resilience in Rural China

In the post-pandemic era, the need for resilient and flexible COVID-19 prevention strategies in rural areas has become increasingly prominent. Based on a sample of 2229 rural residents nationwide, the Structural Equation Model was adopted to analyze the influence of social capital and technological empowerment on pandemic resilience in rural areas. The proportion of diversity, adequacy, and effectiveness of pandemic prevention measures taken by communities was about 57%. Social capital (0.667) and technological empowerment (0.325) had a significant positive impact on rural resilience and pandemic prevention. Social capital plays a mediating role between technological empowerment and pandemic resilience in rural areas. The risk of disease in society stimulates the inherent social capital factors in villages, with the individual social network generating strong social support. Technological empowerment can not only provide new methods for the connection of social capital, but also bring new means for rural authorities to improve their governance capabilities. Social trust in social capital plays an important role in rural resilience and pandemic prevention. The indirect effect of technological empowerment through social capital on pandemic resilience is greater than its direct effect. Social capital construction is the key to rural resilience and pandemic prevention.

Community Resilience during the COVID 19 Pandemic: Experiences of Community-Based Violence Prevention and Recidivism Reduction Program Administrators

Community-based agencies play a notable role in local violence prevention and reentry services in the United States. The COVID-19 pandemic and governmental responses to contain its spread fundamentally transformed the day-to-day lives of most individuals and the workplace. This study examined the challenges experienced and adaptations employed by community-based organizations as they navigated shelter-in-place orders and other workplace and community restrictions. Between July and September of 2020, researchers completed 16 semi-structured interviews with agency administrators of community-based organizations serving at-risk youth or formerly incarcerated persons operating in a large Midwestern city. The findings highlight several challenges faced by agency administrators as they attempted to maintain services to their clients, including having to move from largely in-person service modalities to methods of contact and communication that embraced social distancing and virtual interaction. They also actively responded to the health safety needs of their staff, clients, and community by instituting new safety protocols, like staff and client COVID-19 testing, handing out personal protection equipment and supplies, and educating community members. The findings demonstrate a high degree of community mobilization and resilience in light of a global crisis.

When disaster management agencies create disaster risk: a case study of the US's Federal Emergency Management Agency

PURPOSE

Disaster management agencies are mandated to reduce risk for the populations that they serve. Yet, inequities in how they function may result in their activities creating disaster risk, particularly for already vulnerable and marginalized populations. In this article, how disaster management agencies create disaster risk for vulnerable and marginalized groups is examined, seeking to show the ways existing policies affect communities, and provide recommendations on policy and future research.

DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH

The authors undertook a systematic review of the US disaster management agency, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), examining its programs through a lens of equity to understand how they shape disaster risk.

FINDINGS

Despite a growing commitment to equity within FEMA, procedural, distributive, and contextual inequities result in interventions that perpetuate and amplify disaster risk for vulnerable and marginalized populations. Some of these inequities could be remediated by shifting toward a more bottom-up approach to disaster management, such as community-based disaster risk reduction approaches.

PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS

Disaster management agencies and other organizations can use the results of this study to better understand how to devise interventions in ways that limit risk creation for vulnerable populations, including through community-based approaches.

ORIGINALITY/VALUE

This study is the first to examine disaster risk creation from an organizational perspective, and the first to focus explicitly on how disaster management agencies can shape risk creation. This helps understand the linkages between disaster risk creation, equity and organizations.

A Connected Community Approach: Citizens and Formal Institutions Working Together to Build Community-Centred Resilience

Urban resilience research is recognizing the need to complement a mainstream preoccupation with “hard” infrastructure (electrical grid, storm sewers, etc.) with attention to the “soft” (social) infrastructure issues that include the increased visibility of and role for civil society, moving from (top-down, paternalistic) government to (participatory) governance. Analyses of past shock events invariably point to the need for more concerted efforts in building effective governance and networked relations between civil society groupings and formal institutions before, during, and after crisis. However, the literature contains little advice on how to go about this. In this paper, we advance a Connected Community Approach (CCA) to building community resilience with a specific focus on the relationship between community and formal institutions. In the literature review that informs this work, we assess the current, limited models for connecting communities to formal institutions, as well as the emerging role of community-based organizations in this work, and we offer our own assessment of some of the key tensions, lacunae, and trends in the community resilience field. Principally, we explore the potential of the CCA model, as spearheaded by the East Scarborough Storefront and the Centre for Connected Communities in Toronto, Canada, as a promising approach for building the relational space between civil society and the state that is so often called for in the literature. The paper concludes with future directions for research and practice.

The Transcultural Community Resilience Scale: Psychometric Properties and Multinational Validity in the Context of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Few instruments assess community resilience. In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the capacity of communities to support resilience of members deserves to be assessed to develop programs for improving mental health of affected populations. This article presents the development of the Ottawa-Community Resilience Scale (O-CRS), its underlying factorial structure and transcultural validity with a multilingual (English, French, Creole, Kinyarwanda), multinational (DR Congo, Haiti, Rwanda, Togo) and multicultural sample affected by this pandemic. A sample of 1,267 participants (40.9% women) were recruited in the four countries: DRC (n = 626, 43.4% women), Haiti (n = 225, 42.0% women), Rwanda (n = 174, 40.5% women), and Togo (n = 242, 33.2% women), with a mean age of 32 (SD = 10.1). They completed measures assessing individual resilience, depression and the O-CRS. Exploratory and confirmatory Factor Analyses, Cronbach alpha, coefficient H and the McDonald's Omega, and bivariate regression were used to estimate the underlying components of the O-CRS, its internal consistency and concurrent validity. Parallel factorial analysis and confirmatory factor analysis results revealed an excellent fit 3-factor structure. Internal consistency coefficients varied between 0.82 and 0.95. The O-CRS showed a good construct validity with a positive association with individual resilience and negative association with depression score. Developed with a collaborative approach involving researchers, practitioners, and clients/patients, the O-CRS and its three factors (community strengths and support, community trust and faith, and community values) demonstrated excellent psychometric properties for assessing community resilience among adults during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Invasive Water Hyacinth: Ecology, Impacts and Prospects for the Rural Economy

Water hyacinth (WH) is notorious for causing severe environmental degradation and being an economic burden to manage. However, it offers substantial prospects if exploited, especially by rural communities. High temperatures, eutrophic conditions and other environmental factors promote the proliferation of the plant in regions where it has been introduced. Regarded as among the world's worst invasive weeds, WH is nearly impossible to control and eradicate without an integrated approach and community participation. The effectiveness of control methods varies, yet sustained community involvement determines the long-term success of these methods. Reproducing rapidly, WH has the resource capacity to support a unique microeconomic ecosystem, incentivising WH control by generating sustainable income. The WH ecology, the socioeconomic impacts of its invasion and its various applications are reviewed, and revenue generation and cost-saving options are highlighted. A circular microeconomic model is proposed by integrating WH valorisation into the general limitations of a rural community. Empowering locals with opportunities and enticing them with potential economic gains can be a nudge towards a pro-environment behavioural change in managing WH. This would aid in upgrading local livelihoods and could foster resilience within the community in tackling both environmental problems and economic setbacks through the management of WH invasions.

The next big earthquake may inflict a multi-hazard crisis - Insights from COVID-19, extreme weather and resilience in peripheral cities of Israel

The occurrence of a natural disaster in an area already coping with an epidemic, constitutes a multi-hazard event. Such events are more likely than ever during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. In regions that seasonally experience extreme-weather disasters, such multi-hazard crises are imminent. People living along the Dead Sea Fault and in the Negev are used to harsh weather conditions and to the hardship of living in isolation. While self-reliance and community-support are often the norm in the daily life of residents in in peripheral communities, in an emergency they may be crucial for survival. Worldwide remote communities with limited response and medical infrastructure and resources may struggle to cope with the aftermath of an earthquake while potentially coping with a concurrent epidemic or extreme weather. In this work we focus on the effect of concurring disasters and seasonal stressors. In particular we discuss how various disasters would affect the Covid-19 infection rate, and we demonstrate that in Israel's periphery cities, heat-stress is a consistent and significant seasonal stressor that would hamper emergency and recovery operations. We also suggest that transient tourist population in these remote cities is expected to burden local emergency efforts and facilities. A seasonal over burden parameter is proposed to describe how seasonal tourism and weather conditions enhance the hardship and risk in a multi-hazard situation. A case study shows that high-resolution spatial analysis of risk and preparedness together with a temporal analysis of seasonal effects, may be used to detect specific neighborhoods with high or low resilience and capacity to cope with disasters. Our work demonstrates the need for spatial and temporal, multi-hazard analysis for improving local resilience and emergency plans in periphery cities and communities exposed to seasonal harsh weather.

Concepts and Terms for Addressing Disparities in Public Health Emergencies: Accounting for the COVID-19 Pandemic and the Social Determinants of Health in the United States

Public health emergencies, including the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, highlight disproportionate impacts faced by populations with existing disparities. Concepts and terms used to describe populations disproportionately impacted in emergencies vary over time and across disciplines, but United States (US) federal guidance and law require equal access to our nation's emergency resources. At all levels of emergency planning, public health and their partners must be accountable to populations with existing inequities, which requires a conceptual shift toward using the data-driven social determinants of health (SDOH). SDOH are conditions in which people are born, live, learn, work, play, worship, and age that affect a wide range of health, functioning, and quality of life outcomes and risks. This article reviews the historic use of concepts and terms to describe populations disproportionately impacted by emergencies. It also recommends a shift in emergency activities toward interventions that target the SDOH to adequately address long-standing systemic health disparities and socioeconomic inequities in the United States.

Enhancing Resilience in Canadian Military Families and Communities: A Qualitative Analysis of the Reaching In… Reaching Out and Bounce Back and Thrive! Resiliency Skills Training Programs

Introduction: A new vision of resilience and well-being for Canadian military service members (SMs), Veterans and their families has been championed by the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) and Veterans Affairs Canada (VAC). Operationalizing this vision, which aims to support those who serve/have served and their families as they navigate life during and post-service, requires the support of service providers (SPs). Training SPs to deliver complementary resilience-training programs Reaching In… Reaching Out (RIRO; for adults working with parents of young children) and Bounce Back and Thrive! (BBT; for parents of children aged 0-8 years of age) may support this vision. Objective: To assess the appropriateness of RIRO/BBT trainer training for SPs, and RIRO and BBT resilience-training for military populations and families. Methods: This qualitative descriptive study involved the delivery of RIRO/BBT trainer training to SPs (n = 20), followed by focus groups (n = 6) with SPs and organisational leaders (n = 4). Focus groups were recorded, and data were transcribed and thematically-analysed. Results: Several themes emerged: (1) RIRO/BBT trainer training enabled SPs to model resilience and deliver the resilience-training programs, (2) training was appropriate and adaptable for the CAF and SMs/CMFs, and (3) training could support the development of resilient communities. Discussion: RIRO/BBT trainer training and RIRO and BBT resilience-training programs use a holistic, integrated, experiential, and community approach to resilience-building and align with CAF and VAC initiatives. Once contextualised, such programs could support resilience-building in the military context.

Quantifying community resilience based on fluctuations in visits to points-of-interest derived from digital trace data

This research establishes a methodological framework for quantifying community resilience based on fluctuations in a population's activity during a natural disaster. Visits to points-of-interests (POIs) over time serve as a proxy for activities to capture the combined effects of perturbations in lifestyles, the built environment and the status of business. This study used digital trace data related to unique visits to POIs in the Houston metropolitan area during Hurricane Harvey in 2017. Resilience metrics in the form of systemic impact, duration of impact, and general resilience (GR) values were examined for the region along with their spatial distributions. The results show that certain categories, such as religious organizations and building material and supplies dealers had better resilience metrics-low systemic impact, short duration of impact, and high GR. Other categories such as medical facilities and entertainment had worse resilience metrics-high systemic impact, long duration of impact and low GR. Spatial analyses revealed that areas in the community with lower levels of resilience metrics also experienced extensive flooding. This insight demonstrates the validity of the approach proposed in this study for quantifying and analysing data for community resilience patterns using digital trace/location-intelligence data related to population activities. While this study focused on the Houston metropolitan area and only analysed one natural hazard, the same approach could be applied to other communities and disaster contexts. Such resilience metrics bring valuable insight into prioritizing resource allocation in the recovery process.

Post-Disaster Infrastructure Delivery for Resilience

As climate change increases the frequency and intensity of disasters and associated infrastructure damage, Alternative Project Delivery Methods are well positioned to enable innovative contracting and partnering methods for designing and delivering adaptation solutions that are more time- and cost-effective. However, where conventional “build-back-as-before” post-disaster reconstruction occurs, communities remain vulnerable to future disasters of similar or greater magnitude. In this conceptual paper, we draw on a variety of literature and emergent practices to present how such alternative delivery methods of reconstruction projects can systematically integrate “build-back-better” and introduce more resilient infrastructure outcomes. Considering existing knowledge regarding infrastructure resilience, post-disaster reconstruction and project delivery methods, we consider the resilience regimes of rebound, robustness, graceful extensibility, and sustained adaptability to present the potential for alternative project delivery methods to improve the agility and flexibility of infrastructure against future climate-related and other hazards. We discuss the criticality of continued pursuit of stakeholder engagement to support further improvements to project delivery methods, enabling new opportunities for engaging with a broader set of stakeholders, and for stakeholders to contribute new knowledge and insights to the design process. We conclude the significant potential for such methods to enable resilient infrastructure outcomes, through prioritizing resilience alongside time and cost. We also present a visual schematic in the form of a framework for enabling post-disaster infrastructure delivery for resilience outcomes, across different scales and timeframes of reconstruction. The findings have immediate implications for agencies managing disaster recovery efforts, offering decision-support for improving the adaptive capacity of infrastructure, the services they deliver, and capacities of the communities that rely on them.

Mental Health During COVID-19: Tam Giao and Vietnam's Response

COVID-19 is a novel infectious disease and global health crisis with major psychological implications. Of particular focus are the effects it will have on low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) as being under-resourced poses many challenges. Vietnam, a country with an estimated population of 97.33 million people, which until 30 July, 2020, had 459 confirmed COVID-19 cases with no fatalities but as of November 4th had 35 deaths, can be viewed as a model LMIC for other countries struggling with COVID-19. Employing key tactics such as transparency and effective communication, Vietnam was able to foster strong cooperation between government and citizens, contributing to its success during COVID-19. Moreover, Vietnamese resilience, attributable, in part, to "tam giao," a coexistence of religious and philosophical Taoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism through cultural additivity, provides a unique mindset that other countries can learn from to adapt and even build psychological resilience against COVID-19 pandemic's psychological outcomes. We suggest countries prioritize transparency and communication to mitigate stigmatization and psychological distress that can result from quarantine and other interventions while promoting resources that provide accurate scientific information and psychological aid to citizens. We believe that Tam giao could be repurposed to relieve inevitable contradictions between values and lifestyles in the context of this devastating global health crisis.

Exploring Community Psychosocial Stress Related to Per- and Poly-Fluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) Contamination: Lessons Learned from a Qualitative Study

The purpose of this study was to qualitatively explore the per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) exposure experience and associated stressors, to inform public health efforts to support psychosocial health and resilience in affected communities. Semi-structured interviews (n = 9) were conducted from July-September 2019 with community members and state public health department representatives from areas with PFAS-contaminated drinking water. Thematic analysis was completed and themes were described and summarized. Reported stressors included health concerns and uncertainty, institutional delegitimization and associated distrust, and financial burdens. Interviewees provided several strategies to reduce stress and promote stress coping capacity and resilience, including showing empathy and validating the normalcy of experiencing stress; building trust through visible action and sustained community engagement; providing information and actionable guidance; discussing stress carefully; fostering stress coping capacity and resilience with opportunities to build social capital and restore agency; and building capacity among government agencies and health care providers to address psychosocial stress. While communities affected by PFAS contamination will face unavoidable stressors, positive interactions with government responders and health care providers may help reduce negative stress. More research on how best to integrate community psychosocial health and stress coping and resilience concepts into the public health response to environmental contamination could be helpful in addressing these stressors.

Practitioner Approaches to Measuring Community Resilience: The Analysis of the Resilience of Communities to Disasters Toolkit

To be useful for operational programs, measures of resilience must not just be valid, but be easy to use and useful. Unfortunately, while resilience measurement techniques have progressed tremendously over the past decade, most progress has been on improving validity rather than utility and ease of use. In this article we present a new tool for measuring community resilience that incorporates issues of utility and ease of use, the Analysis of Resilience of Communities to Disasters (ARC-D) toolkit. The toolkit was developed over the course of ten years by the international humanitarian and development organization GOAL to enable aid organizations to measure community resilience in a way that supports resilience building interventions. It offers an approach to measurement that is cognizant of the resilience policy landscape, including the Sendai Framework, approaches to data collection and measurement uses relevant to aid agencies. We first present the core tenants of community resilience measurement before describing the toolkit, which consists of 30 measures, a guidebook, and an online platform. To illustrate its use, we a case study of a resilience building program in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. By developing one of the first resilience toolkits focused beyond validity and providing a description of how such an assessment works, this article has implications for resilience researchers and practitioners.

Resilience and demographic characteristics predicting distress during the COVID-19 crisis

RATIONALE

Due to lack of vaccine or cure, the COVID-19 pandemic presents a threat to all human beings, undermining people's basic sense of safety and increasing distress symptoms.

OBJECTIVE

To investigate the extent to which individual resilience, well-being and demographic characteristics may predict two indicators of Coronavirus pandemic: distress symptoms and perceived danger.

METHOD

Two independent samples were employed: 1) 605 respondents recruited through an internet panel company; 2) 741 respondents recruited through social media, using snowball sampling. Both samples filled a structured online questionnaire. Correlations between psychological/demographic variables and distress and perceived danger were examined. Path analysis was conducted to identify predictive indicators of distress and perceived danger.

RESULTS

Significant negative correlations were found between individual/community resilience and sense of danger (-0.220 and -0.255 respectively; p < .001) and distress symptoms (- 0.398 and -0.544 respectively; p < .001). Significant positive correlations were found between gender, community size, economic difficulties and sense of danger (0.192, 0.117 and 0.244 respectively; p < .001). Gender and economic difficulties also positively correlated with distress symptoms (0.130 and 0.214 respectively; p < .001). Path analysis revealed that all paths were significant (p < .008 to .001) except between family income and distress symptoms (p = .12). The seven predictors explained 20% of sense of danger variance and 34% the distress symptoms variance. The most highly predictive indicators were the two psychological characteristics, individual resilience, and well-being. Age, gender, community size, and economic difficulties due to COVID-19 further add to predicting distress, while community and national resilience do not. .

CONCLUSIONS

Individual resilience and well-being have been found as the first and foremost predictors of COVID-19 anxiety. Though both predictors are complex and may be influenced by many factors, given the potential return of COVID-19 threat and other future health pandemic threats to our world, we must rethink and develop ways to reinforce them.

Predictors of National and Community Resilience of Israeli Border Inhabitants Threatened by War and Terror

The present study investigates predictors of the national resilience (NR) and community resilience (CR) of civilians who live on Israel's northern border, and are facing for years acts of terror and threats of war. A sample of 1515 kibbutz (communal settlement) members who live next to this northern Israeli border has responded to questionnaires pertaining to the investigated resiliencies. Results indicate that under these conditions psychological reactions (trust in community institutes and individual resilience), rather than demographic characteristics, are the best predictors of NR and CR; although NR is further predicted by right-wing political attitudes. Our data suggest that CR and NR are not predicted by objective examinations of the strength of one's community or country. Both of them are perceived as stronger the greater the trust of the respondents in their own ability to cope with adversities, and in the ability of their close community to take care of them and their families in face of terror.

Health-Care Services as a Platform for Building Community Resilience among Minority Communities: An Israeli Pilot Study during the COVID-19 Outbreak

Background: Previous studies of minority groups in times of emergency have tended to focus on risk reduction or on individual resilience, overlooking the community factors that could be bolstered to promote better health and safety outcomes. The current study aimed to examine the role of health-care services in the perceived community resilience of urban and suburban Arab communities in Israel during the COVID-19 outbreak. Method: The study included 196 adults age 17–76 years, who filled out on-line questionnaires in May 2020; 112 participants lived in an urban community and 84 lived in a suburban community. Community resilience was evaluated using the Conjoint Community Resiliency Assessment Measure (CCRAM), a validated five-factor multidimensional instrument. Results: Residents of the suburban community reported higher community resilience than residents of the urban community. This difference was related to increased preparedness levels and strength of place attachment in the suburban community. Residents of suburban communities were also more satisfied and confident in health-care services than those of urban communities. Regression analysis showed that the satisfaction with primary health-care services, and not community type, significantly predicted community resilience. Conclusions: Our results support the pivotal role of primary health care in building community resilience of minority communities in times of emergency and routine.

The Water-Energy-Food Nexus as an Adaptation Strategy for Achieving Sustainable Livelihoods at a Local Level

The imbalance between resource availability and population increase requires transformative approaches to inform policy, decision-making and practice on coherent adaptation strategies for improved livelihoods and resilient communities. Nexus approaches are built on an understanding that natural processes do not operate in isolation within a system; hence, an emergent challenge in one unit obviously disturbs the whole system. This study applied an integrated water-energy-food (WEF) nexus analytical model to holistically assess resource availability, distribution, use and management at a local level in Sakhisizwe Local Municipality, South Africa. The aim was to inform strategies and guidelines on improving livelihoods of resource-poor rural communities. The calculated municipal composite index of 0.185, coupled with a deformed spider graph, represents a marginally sustainable resource management result. The analysis simplified the relationship between the intricately interlinked socio-ecological components and facilitated the identification of priority areas for intervention. The process provides pathways that steer resource use efficiencies and attainment of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Unlike current linear approaches, integrated and transformative approaches like the WEF nexus provide a multidisciplinary platform for stakeholder engagement to sustainably enhance cross-sectoral coordination of resource management and harmonisation of policies and strategies. The WEF nexus approach is useful for informing decisions on improving livelihoods, enhancing resource securities, identifying priority areas for intervention and providing transformative pathways towards sustainable development.

City Resilience towards Coastal Hazards: An Integrated Bottom-Up and Top-Down Assessment

Community resilience is increasingly required to adapt to the effects of the frequency and severity of the ever-increasing number of coastal hazards. This paper uses the case study of the city of Banda Aceh, Indonesia, which was devastated by the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, with the aim of investigating the city’s level of resilience towards coastal hazards. This paper aims to: (i) assess the preparedness of coastal communities; (ii) evaluate the level of resilience of the city to coastal hazards; and (iii) formulate strategic steps in an effort to mitigate coastal hazards in Banda Aceh. The evaluation was conducted using mixed methods (both quantitative and qualitative) through data triangulation. Data collection involved 311 household surveys, two focus group discussions with 30 participants, and interviews with seven representatives from government and non-government organisations. Regarding the survey, the preparedness level of Banda Aceh’s residents is categorised as “low“. The results of overall city resilience assessments are also classified as “low”. This finding indicates that more planned, systematic, and sustainable efforts are needed. Hence, this study also recommends strategies to enhance resilience in dealing with coastal hazards.