Emergency Planning for Faith Communities

Faith communities have resources such as buildings and people as well as a desire to serve the community in times of need. Understanding how to plug into your community response is crucial to making the biggest difference. This session explores how to assess and prepare your resources, train your members, and actively practice responding effectively and efficiently to help those in need. 

Faith communities may not naturally see themselves as extensions of Public Health, but they are! This is an opportunity to understand some basic concepts of Public Health and how being a part of a community of faith is a social element of health. Explore how faith communities play an essential role in health education, health equity, and even access to healthcare. 

As a good community partner, you've volunteered to share your building to help your school, senior center, or local government during an emergency. Your facility is now "written into the emergency plan", but you're not sure what that means! We will discuss key elements of emergency response such as planning, notification, activation, recovery, and most importantly, training and practice. Don't be caught off-guard once you've been identified as a community resource.

Noah was faced with an extreme weather event and rose to the challenge of preparing for, responding to, and recovering from a natural disaster. What can we learn from Noah as we live our lives and seek to be good stewards of personal and community resources? How do we ensure we care for all community members, especially in a time of disaster?