Abstract
The association between health and community resilience is well established in the literature. However, maintaining continuity of healthcare services during emergencies, and their contribution in the context of community resiliency have not been sufficiently studied. This study aims to explore the relationship between the public’s confidence in the availability of healthcare services during and following emergencies, and community resilience. A cross-sectional study was conducted among 3478 Israeli adults, using the Conjoint Community Resilience Assessment Measurement (CCRAM) tool. Associations between confidence in health services availability during emergencies, socio-demographic variables, and community resilience as measured by the CCRAM score were analyzed. The results revealed that confidence in the availability of health services positively correlated with community resilience score (r(3377) = 0.580, p < 0.001), and that it contributed significantly to increasing resilience (OR = 2.67, 95% CI (2.4–2.9), p < 0.001). Maintaining continuity of healthcare services during emergencies has effects beyond the provision of medical treatment. For instance, the confidence of the population in the availability of these services contributes to community resilience. In turn, this finding can be translated into practical resilience building actions and to facilitate community health.
Highlights
Community resilience is a multifaceted and cross-disciplinary concept often used in the context of emergencies to describe the ability to cope, mitigate, and rebound quickly after the event [1,2].The association between community resilience and public health has been widely discussed in the literature in relation to both routine and emergency situations [2,3,4,5]
The current study explores the relationship between residents’ trust in the availability of healthcare services during an emergency, and their community resilience score in a population that is prone to emergency situations
The study replicated previous findings on characteristics of community resilience [29,30]: no differences were noted in the average Conjoint Community Resilience Assessment Measurement (CCRAM) score by gender
Summary
Community resilience is a multifaceted and cross-disciplinary concept often used in the context of emergencies to describe the ability to cope, mitigate, and rebound quickly after the event [1,2]. The association between community resilience and public health has been widely discussed in the literature in relation to both routine and emergency situations [2,3,4,5]. Community resilience is interpreted in the light of the definition of public health as a state of complete physical, mental, and social wellbeing (and not merely the absence of disease) [6]. In the context of public health emergency management, community resilience takes on a broader. Res. Public Health 2019, 16, 3519; doi:10.3390/ijerph16193519 www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph
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