Building Community Capacity and Fostering Disaster Resilience : Building Capacity and Fostering Community Resilience

The study of resilience in development has overturned many negative assumptions and deficit-focused models about children growing up under the threat of disadvantage and adversity. The most surprising conclusion emerging from studies of these children is the ordinariness of resilience. An examination of converging findings from variable-focused and person-focused investigations of these phenomena suggests that resilience is common and that it usually arises from the normative functions of human adaptational systems, with the greatest threats to human development being those that compromise these protective systems. The conclusion that resilience is made of ordinary rather than extraordinary processes offers a more positive outlook on human development and adaptation, as well as direction for policy and practice aimed at enhancing the development of children at risk for problems and psychopathology.

This article describes a model of communication known as crisis and emergency risk communication (CERC). The model is outlined as a merger of many traditional notions of health and risk communication with work in crisis and disaster communication. The specific kinds of communication activities that should be called for at various stages of disaster or crisis development are outlined. Although crises are by definition uncertain, equivocal, and often chaotic situations, the CERC model is presented as a tool health communicators can use to help manage these complex events.