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NEW JOURNAL ARTICLE ALERT: Examining stress and multiple disaster exposure

Examining stress and multiple disaster exposure: An exploratory analysis of the role of sociodemographic characteristics and disaster preparedness

The purpose of this research was to examine the relationship between sociodemographic characteristics and disaster preparedness on both multiple disaster exposure and perceived stress, for residents of the Gulf Coast (United States) at risk of experiencing multiple disasters. Binary logistic regression was conducted using primary survey data collected from 2020 to 2022, which captured two hurricane seasons (n = 807).

NEW JOURNAL ARTICLE ALERT: Intimate Partner Violence and Disasters: A Review

The objective of this study was to review systematically research into intimate partner violence and disasters. Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a widespread public health problem that affects an estimated one in three women globally. The increase in frequency and severity of disasters due to climate change is likely to worsen IPV globally due to disruptions to normal life and the stressors they create. To better understand the relationship between IPV and disasters and to support future research, we conducted a literature review to identify and synthesize research on IPV and disaster.

NEW JOURNAL ARTICLE ALERT: Improving Policy and Treatment Interventions for Sexual and Gender Minority Perpetrators of Intimate Partner Violence to Reduce Adverse Health Outcomes

Intimate partner violence (IPV), understood as physical, sexual, and psychological aggression, is a pernicious health problem that is as or more prevalent in sexual and gender minority (SGM) relationships as in heterosexual and cisgender ones. IPV has many impacts, including physical and psychological health consequences. Effective treatment of abusers is needed to reduce IPV in SGM communities.

NEW JOURNAL ARTICLE ALERT: EXPLAINING DISASTER AND PANDEMIC PREPAREDNESS

“Explaining disaster and pandemic preparedness at the nexus of personal resilience and social vulnerability: An exploratory study" published in Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness 

The purpose of this research was a pilot examination to identify and assess relationships among social vulnerability, personal resilience, and preparedness for a sample of US residents living in the Gulf South, who had experienced climate-related disaster (e.g., hurricanes) and the COVID-19 pandemic.

NEW JOURNAL ARTICLE ALERT: INTIMATE PARTNER VIOLENCE AND POSTTRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER

This study investigated posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) prevalence among a sample of intimate partner violence (IPV) survivors (n  =  77) who filed for restraining orders in rural Louisiana during the COVID-19 pandemic. IPV survivors were individually interviewed to assess their self-reported levels of perceived stress, resilience, potential PTSD, COVID-19-related experiences, and sociodemographic characteristics. Data were analyzed to differentiate group membership between two groups; non-PTSD and probable PTSD.

NEW JOURNAL ARTICLE ALERT: Wild Urban Injustice: A Critical POET Model to Advance Environmental Justice

Background: People and wildlife can both be the subjects of environmental injustice. Although their experiences are clearly not the same, shared logics of oppression often impose harms through the environment on vulnerable and marginalized people and free-living nonhuman animals. Critical environmental justice provides a matrix for analyzing and addressing arrangements of power across categories of difference, whereas human ecology approaches offer frameworks for analyzing interactions across human and environmental systems in urban contexts.

NEW ARTICLE ALERT: Assessing Resident Perceptions of Physical Disorder on Perceptions of Crime

This paper investigates whether perceptions of neighborhood physical disorder—measured by vacant lots, vacant buildings, and overgrown vegetation—influence perceptions of crime and perceptions of the frequency or magnitude of crime events. We use ordinal logistic regression to analyze individual-level and contextual-level variables derived from a survey of 401 randomly selected residents in seven New Orleans neighborhoods.

NEW JOURNAL ARTICLE ALERT: Along the Energy Justice Continuum: An examination of energy disposal through the lens of feminist community based participatory action research

Energy justice research tends to focus on inequalities that result from energy systems, including from fossil fuel extraction to production, distribution, and consumption. However, little research has investigated local effects of the disposal of waste products from fossil fuel extraction. To better understand these impacts, we employed a case study approach with qualitative interviews of residents of Kettleman City, a rural community in California's Central Valley (USA) that hosts a hazardous waste landfill which accepts predominantly waste from fossil fuel production.

NEW JOURNAL ARTICLE ALERT: Environmental Justice and Wildlife Conservation

New research published in Environmental Science & Policy proposes alternative worldviews to the North American Model of Wildlife Management. For more than a century, wildlife conservation in the United States has been built on the notion that nonhuman animal populations are resources to be regulated by law and managed efficiently, according to the best available science and in the public trust.

New Article Alert: Disaster's disparate impacts: Analyzing perceived stress and personal resilience across gender and race

The purpose of this research was to identify differences in perceived stress and personal resilience across race, gender, and different types of stressors (i.e., rent/mortgage stress) for a sample of U.S. residents experiencing the COVID-19 pandemic. This study used a cross-sectional, convenience sampling design for primary survey data collected over 10 weeks starting in April 2020 (n = 374).

New Article Alert: Assessing explanatory variables of perceived stress to disaster: implications for risk research

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to increase social, economic, and psychological risks, including increased perceived stress – or the degree to which a person perceives a stressor and their ability to cope with it. The current study uses novel data collected during the COVID-19 pandemic to assess the role of a range of demographic and disaster-related experiential variables on perceived stress (n = 744). Hierarchical linear regression indicates that women experience greater perceived stress than men and as age and educational attainment increase, perceived stress decreases.

NEW JOURNAL ARTICLE ALERT: Depression and sociodemographic characteristics of rural communities during the COVID-19 pandemic

New research identifies sociodemographic predictors of depression for a rural population in the U.S. during the COVID-19 pandemic, in order to enhance mental health disaster preparedness. This research used t-tests to differentiate between gender and ethnicity groups regarding depression status; binary logistic regression to identify socio-demographic characteristics that predict depression status; and t-test to differentiate between average depression scores, measured by the PHQ-9, pre-COVID-19 pandemic (2019) and after it’s start (2020).