School of Public Health and Interdisciplinary Studies

Permanent link for this collection

https://hdl.handle.net/10292/10764
The School of Public Health and Interdisciplinary Studies research institutes and centres play an important role in specialist teaching and research conducted by academic staff and postgraduate students. This places AUT students at the forefront of much of the ground-breaking research undertaken in New Zealand in the field of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, Psychology, Psychotherapy and Counselling, and Public Health.

Browse

Browsing School of Public Health and Interdisciplinary Studies by Subject "11 Sustainable Cities and Communities"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
  • Item
    Bridging Gaps Between Disaster Risk Reduction and Drowning Prevention
    (Elsevier BV, 2024-04-02) Le Dé, Loïc
    Drowning is a form of silent and neglected disaster. Hundreds of thousands die every year from drowning, with cumulated fatalities surpassing that of large-scale disasters. However, research on drowning is largely absent from disaster studies and global and national disaster risk reduction policy frameworks rarely mention drowning risk and the related strategies for strengthening water safety. Drowning is mainly framed as a public health issue being studied predominantly by scholars from injury prevention, public health, and medicine. This paper argues that both disaster studies and disaster risk reduction policies have a critical role to play in progressing drowning prevention. It reviews the existing drowning literature and highlights trends, challenges, and opportunities to bridge gaps in knowledge, policy, and practice for reducing drowning risk. The article highlights the strong conceptual underpinnings that characterize both the disaster risk and drowning fields, the need for data sharing, the potential for community-approaches to drowning risk reduction, and ultimately recommends a more systematic integration of drowning in disaster risk reduction initiatives. The paper ends by underlining some of the barriers and requirements to foster collaboration between the disaster risk domains and drowning prevention.
  • Item
    Homelessness and COVID-19 in New Zealand: Challenges, Emergency Responses, and Implications for Disaster Risk Reduction
    (Elsevier, 2023-07-22) Le Dé, Loïc; Fraser, Anita; St Martin, Mathew
    People experiencing homelessness have traditionally received limited attention in disaster research and disaster risk reduction policy. The COVID-19 pandemic has shed light on the vulnerable conditions of urban homelessness during emergency with unprecedented response efforts. Focusing on Aotearoa New Zealand, this research analyses homeless people's experiences of the COVID-19 and examines the policies and actions developed by government agencies and local organisations. The study highlights that while the homeless did not perceive the virus as a threat the COVID-19 framework with border closures and lockdowns had direct impacts on their livelihoods. The emergency policies focused mainly on homeless who are rough sleepers with a strong emphasis on emergency shelters. The study finds that while effective in temporally housing the homeless, the emergency shelters were often inappropriate to cater for homeless needs and lacked long-term views to transit towards sustainable solutions to homelessness. We also point out issues linked to coordination across agencies, leadership and resources needed for both effective emergency management and disaster risk reduction.
  • Item
    How Can Practitioners Support Citizen Volunteers in Disaster Risk Reduction? Insight From “Good and Ready” in Aotearoa New Zealand
    (Springer Science and Business Media LLC, 2024-06-12) Le Dé, Loïc; Ronoh, Steve; Kyu, Ei Mon Thinn; Rive, Brigitte
    Global and national policy frameworks emphasize the importance of people’s participation and volunteers’ role in disaster risk reduction. While research has extensively focused on volunteers in disaster response and recovery, less attention has been paid on how organizations involved in disaster risk management can support volunteers in leading and coordinating community-based disaster risk reduction. In 2019, the New Zealand Red Cross piloted the Good and Ready initiative in Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand, with the objective to empower local people in resilience building with a focus on volunteers and community participation. This research examined the positive and negative outcomes of Good and Ready and investigated volunteers’ experiences in the disaster resilience initiative. It involved the codesign of a questionnaire-based survey using participatory methods with Good and Ready volunteers, the dissemination of the survey to gather volunteers’ viewpoints, and a focus group discussion with participatory activities with Red Cross volunteers. The findings highlight that a key challenge lies in finding a balance between a program that provides flexibility to address contextual issues and fosters communities’ ownership, versus a prescriptive and standardized approach that leaves little room for creativity and self-initiative. It pinpoints that supporting volunteers with technical training is critical but that soft skills training such as coordinating, communicating, or facilitating activities at the local level are needed. It concludes that the sustainability of Good and Ready requires understanding and meeting volunteers’ motivations and expectations and that enhancing partnerships with local emergency management agencies would strengthen the program.
Items in these collections are protected by the Copyright Act 1994 (New Zealand). These works may be consulted by you, provided you comply with the provisions of the Act and the following conditions of use:
  • Any use you make of these works must be for research or private study purposes only, and you may not make them available to any other person.
  • Authors control the copyright of their works. You will recognise the author’s right to be identified as the author of the work, and due acknowledgement will be made to the author where appropriate.
  • You will obtain the author’s permission before publishing any material from the work.