Decreasing Older Adult Mortality in Disasters

Purposes/Aims: This project created a standard operating guideline to decrease older adult mortality in disasters for use by the Utah Health Emergency Response Team (UHERT). Rationale/Background: The UHERT is a mobile medical response team comprised of 75 healthcare workers across Utah. The team can deploy with necessary supplies and equipment to sustain themselves for 72 hours while providing medical care in a fixed or temporary location. Before this project, the UHERT had no specific standard operating guideline detailing care of older adults in disasters. A guideline was necessary to address the specific needs and concerns of seniors. Older adults are disproportionately affected because of increased chronic conditions and disabilities, impaired physical mobility, decreased sensory awareness, and social and economic health constraints that lead to increased vulnerability.Methods: A standard operating guideline was created and reviewed by content experts in the Utah Department of Health (UDOH) and the UHERT in autumn of 2019. A UHERT training based on the guideline was subsequently completed. Following the training, qualitative data were collected from open-ended questions to UHERT members and detailed notes taken during the training's debriefing. A content analysis was performed to identify common categories and were organized into themes and summarized. The guideline was revised based upon the results of the analysis. Outcomes: The outcome of this project was the adoption of a standard operating guideline into official UHERT guidelines. Conclusion: After the initial completion of the standard operating guideline, it was edited by UHERT and UDOH managers and then incorporated into a training. Following the training, qualitative data were collected from the UHERT. The guideline was edited based on summarized recommendations from team members. The guideline was then adopted into official UHERT use. The guideline is tailored for the UHERT, but is applicable to many of the UDOH's disaster risk reduction efforts for the state.