Abstract
Natural disasters affect populations in various parts of the world. The impacts of disasters can cause many problems to the health of people and disruption to family life, potentially leading to an unexpected transition. The objective of this paper is to present the unexpected transitional experiences of rural families following a natural disaster. A multiple case study of six families was conducted with children and adolescents in a rural area affected by a 2008 disaster in southern Brazil. For data collection, we used participant observation, narrative interviews, genograms, ecomaps and an instrument called calendar routine. The analysis of the data resulted in different family interpretations about the changes resulting from the storm and compared life before and after the disaster. The loss of homes and loved ones, migration, unemployment, and losses from the farm were the main changes associated with new development tasks. The experiences of family transition after the disaster revealed that losses influenced social lives, daily routines and the preservation of cultural values.
Highlights
The impact of natural disasters and their destructive potential and ability to traumatize the lives of individuals, families and communities have been given greater importance, given global discussions about climate change and sustainability
Some authors 1 argue that the health research community has been slow to take up the challenge of investigating the impacts of climate change on health and health care, adaptive capacity, needs and resilience development
Everyday disasters go unnoticed in Brazil, since the representation of such events expresses the illusory notion of overcoming the disaster by the intervention of the state and national support in providing donations, while the temporality of the experiences of those affected is underestimated in relation to the episode that is considered to be from natural causes, and the social catastrophe that remains is publicly neglected 25
Summary
The impact of natural disasters and their destructive potential and ability to traumatize the lives of individuals, families and communities have been given greater importance, given global discussions about climate change and sustainability. Organizational and governmental efforts have mainly been focused on the consequences of disasters and have sometimes strengthened preparedness and response capacities, based on political and cultural needs. This issue was addressed at the 20th World Health Promotion Conference (http:// www.iuhpeconference.net/, accessed on 09/Feb/2016), held in Geneva (Switzerland), in July 2010, with a focus on building bridges between health promotion and sustainable development. The United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20), in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), in June 2012, resulted in the final report The Future We Want. The Sendai Framework is the successor to the Hyogo Framework for Action 2005-2015 aimed at building the resilience of nations and communities to disasters 3
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