The Role of Colleges and Universities in
Building Community Resilience to Disasters
Rose L. Pfefferbaum
Phoenix College
A variety of disasters and ongoing terrorist threats have commanded the attention of the American public and the institutions that serve them. As a focal point for education at the local level, colleges and universities are in a unique position to help individuals, neighborhoods, businesses, and local governments to prepare for and respond to mass casualty events. Moreover, institutions of higher education have the potential to contribute significantly to personal and community resilience to mass trauma.
This paper describes community resilience and introduces the Community Assessment of Resilience Tool (CART)©, a community intervention that is both a measure of community resilience and a method for initiating community resilience building. As one example of how higher education can become involved in developing and enhancing community resilience, CART can be used in conjunction with service learning and practicum experiences. It can also be used in traditional and interdisciplinary social science courses that address disasters, community assessment and competence, social psychology, sociology, political science, public policy, urban planning, current affairs, future studies, economics, history, geography, and research methods. CART activities can be designed for work at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.
Community Resilience
\ Resilience – the ability to adapt to adversity, trauma, and threat – is an ongoing process that supports growth. It involves attitudes, thoughts, and behaviors that can be taught, learned, practiced, and developed (American Psychological Association Task Force, n.d.; Reissman, Klomp, Kent, & Pfefferbaum, 2004; Steinberg & Ritzmann, 1990). More than individual coping, community resilience is grounded in the ability of community members to take intentional, effective, collective action to offset the impact of a problem or address a threat. As such, community resilience is more than the ability of members to cope individually and it is more than a collection of resilient individuals. People must be able to work together toward a common goal. Community resilience couples recovery from adversity with efforts by individuals and groups to transform their environments to moderate the effects of future events. It entails the potential to grow from crises (Brown & Kulig, 1996/97; Kulig, 2000; Pfefferbaum, 2007; Pfefferbaum, in press).
Community Resilience Attributes
Still relatively new to the lexicon, community resilience is related to community capacity, competence, health, mobilization, and empowerment. Pfefferbaum and colleagues (2007) reviewed the community capacity and competence literature (Cottrell, 1976; Gibbon, Labonte, & Laverack, 2002; Goeppinger & Baglioni, 1985; Goodman et al., 1998; Labonte & Laverack, 2001) to identify seven attributes of community resilience. These attributes were endorsed by a panel of experts at the 2004 Community Resilience Mini Summit: Developing Community Resilience for Children and Families, convened by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Terrorism and Disaster Branch of the National Center for Child Traumatic Stress. The seven interrelated attributes are: Connectedness, Commitment, and Shared Values; Participation; Structure, Roles, and Responsibilities; Resources; Support and Nurturance; Critical Reflection and Skill Building; and Communication (Pfefferbaum et al., 2007; Pfefferbaum et al., in press). When considered in the context of disasters, community resilience also involves Disaster Preparedness and Response. These interrelated attributes, which are currently being examined empirically, are described below.
Connectedness, Commitment, and Shared Values. Connection to a place or group of people with shared history, laws, values, and social mores is the cornerstone of community. A sense of belonging and commitment to community are likely to be strengthened by the perception that community members are treated fairly and that one’s personal well-being derives from affiliation with the community. Communities that embrace diversity may be better able to address the needs of members in the face of adversity. Relationships characterized by mutual concern and benefit can contribute to consensus building and collaboration.
Participation. Participation in community organizations and activities can strengthen the sense of belonging, ownership, and personal contribution. Communities that facilitate and foster member involvement may be better able to identify and address issues through cooperation and civic engagement at the local level. Opportunities for community involvement should be sensitive to the ability, interests, and diversity of members. When participation is valued and encouraged, members are likely to take pride in their contributions and to derive greater benefit from involvement. This may help the community to address needs and problems that arise anew in conjunction with disasters as well as those that occur otherwise.
Structure, Roles, and Responsibilities. Communities are comprised of individuals, groups, and organizations with reciprocal links that form overlapping networks. Resilient communities reflect an appreciation for equity rather than discrimination, with community standards, rules, and procedures that foster social interaction and governance. Such communities identify and address concerns through frequent, supportive, and collaborative interactions. Solutions may emerge from new, formal or informal, associations that arise to establish priorities and resolve issues. Structure, roles, and responsibilities create the capacity for preparedness and decisive and timely response to crises, thereby diminishing adverse secondary consequences. Strong and responsive leadership, able teamwork, clear organizational structures, and well-defined roles, responsibilities, and lines of authority facilitate adaptation and recovery. Communities must engage with the larger society, accepting, working with, and supporting other communities. In a highly uncertain, all-hazards environment, structural elements must permit flexibility in addressing unforeseen vulnerabilities and threats.
Resources. Community resources include those belonging to members as well as those attached to the community itself. In addition to land and other raw materials, resources include physical capital which creates an infrastructure and tools for the community. The workforce, expertise and leadership for personal and community development, and member qualities such as hope and the will to improve community well-being constitute human resources. Social resources include relationships and support systems within a community and characteristics such as cohesion. Financial resources facilitate acquisition and exchange of other resources and the production process. Resilient communities acquire, mobilize, allocate, invest in, and use their resources effectively to serve members and meet community goals. Infrastructure and systems must endure and respond suitably to a wide variety of disasters and secondary adversities. Further, a community’s resource base must permit essential community operations to be maintained even in the event of major disasters, with sufficient resources that substitute for and complement each other. Resilience necessitates ongoing investment in physical, human, and social capital which may include, for example, improvements in schools and health facilities, training, and neighborhood development.
Support and Nurturance. Supportive and nurturing communities address the needs of their members regardless of socioeconomic status and background. They provide opportunities for members to be heard, help members to achieve goals and overcome problems, promote member well-being, instill hope, and empower individuals and groups. Support and nurturance enhance resilience at community as well as individual levels. Communities should become more resilient in the process of providing support and by addressing basic human needs and the environment in which their members live and work. Support and nurturance of members may be enhanced when communities become more adept at identifying, acquiring, and equitably distributing resources within the community and with the larger society. In resilient communities, support mechanisms provide early and ongoing assessment of and assistance to vulnerable members before, during, and in the aftermath of disasters. Support must be sustained through crises and should buffer the personal, social, and economic losses that accompany mass trauma.
Critical Reflection and Skill Building. Resilient communities engage in introspection, assess their performance, and examine their successes and failures. Critical reflection regarding values, their history and experiences, and the experiences of others, should permit formal and informal leaders to reason, establish goals and objectives, make decisions, and develop and implement strategies to enrich the community and its members. Resilient communities address problems, needs, and issues. They create structures to identify, collect, analyze, and use information. They also plan, manage, and evaluate programs and activities. Resilient communities learn from adversity and use their strengths to deal with their challenges. Resilient communities recognize the need for and foster skill building at individual and systemic levels. Learning, accommodation, and growth may lead to a sense of self-determination, enhanced capacity, and greater self-reliance.
Communication. Community resilience requires and is reinforced by clear, timely, accurate, and effective communication among members and with other communities and the larger society. Common meanings and understandings and the perception of honesty and openness are essential for effective communication. Community members should have opportunities to identify and articulate their views, attitudes, and needs, especially in support of diversity. Open and productive communication in the disaster context can build trust in leadership, enhancing preparedness, compliance with safety directives, effective response, and successful recovery. It can also address and promote the resolution of existing and emerging unmet needs in other areas. Sufficient redundancy in communication channels can help ensure timely resource mobilization in response to threats.
Disaster Preparedness and Response. Community resilience to disasters requires the adoption of measures to prepare for and respond to disasters, thereby limiting adverse consequences and setting the stage for reconstruction and recovery. In its broadest sense, disaster preparedness includes activities to avoid or control an incident and to decrease risks to people and property. Preparedness is an ongoing process that identifies vulnerabilities, assesses threats, and determines resource requirements. It involves efforts to prevent and mitigate actual and potential adverse effects and to amass resources for response and recovery. Response addresses the direct, short-term effects of a disaster. In addition to emergency assistance, it includes efforts to lessen further damage during or in the immediate aftermath of a disaster; to support basic human needs; and to maintain the social, economic, and political structure of an affected community. The relatively short-term response phase transitions into a longer period of recovery during which survivors begin to rebuild their lives and their community.
Community Resilience Operating Assumptions
Communities with higher levels of the eight attributes may be more effective at mitigating adverse consequences of disasters. Qualitatively different from the original seven attributes, the eighth – disaster preparedness and response – is essential to disaster management and recovery. Nonetheless, activities that enhance community resilience need not focus directly on disaster management to reduce adverse outcomes associated with mass casualty events. A community in which members know each other personally through regular participation in community activities and organizations may respond better to a disaster than one in which members share little in the way of values and rarely interact. Accessible support systems and robust and redundant emergency and human services are likely to improve disaster response and recovery even when those resources were not designed specifically to address community disasters. A well defined, transparent community structure and effective communication facilitate problem solving. Skill building at the community level can help address resource limitations identified through critical reflection (Pfefferbaum, 2007; Pfefferbaum, in press).
The Relationship of Resilience Attributes to Disaster Management and Recovery
The relationship of resilience attributes to community resilience, disaster management, and recovery are illustrated in Figure 1. The seven attributes of a resilient community contribute directly to community resilience. The eighth attribute is separated into two categories – preparedness and response – and is isolated from the other attributes to emphasize its role in anchoring this discussion in disasters. Disaster preparedness and response not only contribute directly to and are affected by community resilience, they also affect the recovery environment independent of their relationship to community resilience. Moreover, community resilience can improve disaster management and recovery – particularly with respect to psychosocial issues – and, as noted above, it can reduce adverse consequences of disasters even when community resilience building is not related directly to disaster preparedness, response, and recovery. Thus community resilience efforts can complement and enhance other disaster management strategies. This is particularly important with respect to unanticipated and unknown events for which little direct preparedness may occur (Pfefferbaum, in press).
Figure 1: The Relationship of Resilience Attributes to Disaster Management and Recovery*
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*Adapted from Pfefferbaum, R. L. et al., in press
The Relationship of Colleges and Universities to Community Resilience
Critical analysis, skill building, and other efforts to develop human and social capital are central to the mission of higher education. Thus colleges and universities naturally reinforce attributes of community resilience. Many institutions of higher education – especially community colleges – are a focal point within communities capable of engaging the general public and supporting public discourse. Colleges and universities also encourage self exploration and examination of the environment and they facilitate individual and group problem solving which can enhance both personal and community resilience.
Community resilience falls within the purview of social science disciplines such as anthropology, economics, education, geography, history, political science, psychology, sociology, and ethnic and international studies. These disciplines routinely address community resilience attributes as part of existing curricula though they may not do so intentionally or directly. For example, most social science disciplines are concerned with personal and communal resources and many consider roles and responsibilities. Community resilience topics could be deliberately integrated into existing coursework through discussion, case studies, applications, and problems. As part of their role in the accumulation and use of new knowledge, social science faculty could explore community resilience through collaborative projects with practitioners, clinicians, policy makers, and other researchers.
The Community Assessment of Resilience Tool (CART)©
The Community Assessment of Resilience Tool (CART)© provides a mechanism by which colleges and universities can become directly engaged in community resilience building. CART was developed by the Terrorism and Disaster Center (TDC) at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center with funding from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism. Based on the eight, interrelated, community resilience attributes described above, CART is a community intervention that includes a survey instrument, key informant / focus group script, and process for assessing community resilience to disasters.
As illustrated in Figure 2, the CART intervention engages community members, guiding them as they use assessment data to inform community action. A variety of community stakeholders may be engaged in the process including, for example, faculty and students, community leaders, faith-based organizations, representatives of various professions or businesses, or a cross section of the community. The CART process can provide a foundation that fosters meaningful dialogue within a community as members explore and discover aspects of their community while focusing on a specific problem or potential problem such as a disaster.
Results of community surveys, key informant interviews, and focus groups, as well as demographic characteristics, form the basis for analysis. CART participants are encouraged to work together in focus groups or meetings to identify community strengths, opportunities for improvement, and areas of disagreement. Feedback is provided via a written summary which includes a community profile.
If participants are interested, they may identify an issue for focused and detailed problem-solving and develop goals, objectives, and strategies for addressing the issue. In doing so, they may generate a local plan which could then be pilot tested and evaluated. It is up to the community – as represented by participants and their organizations – to drive the development, field testing, refinement, and adoption of a community improvement plan. Such an approach appreciates the community context in which issues and concerns arise, it recognizes the importance of local investment and ownership in community development, and it helps ensure community engagement in community action.
The CART survey questionnaire assesses community resilience, demographics of respondents, and additional issues of interest identified by participating organizations. Community resilience items are based on theory, key informant feedback, and analysis of field survey results. The inclusion of other items permits local organizations to gather information about specific organizational or community concerns that can be used to address particular issues. The CART survey can be administered in person, over the telephone, by mail, or online. Results of the survey are used to develop a community profile.
CART also includes a focus group script and directions that can be used instead for key informant interviews. Focus groups typically involve, for example, community leaders, representatives of various business or professional organizations, or neighborhood residents. Participants are surveyed prior to the focus group meeting and the survey results are discussed as part of the agenda. Focus group participants also explore the meaning of community and their own community’s resilience around the attributes described above.
CART is not a mechanism for labeling, ranking, or comparing communities. Rather, it provides a snapshot of strengths and challenges that are meaningful for the particular community and organizations participating in the CART process. Survey and focus group results can initiate or contribute information for community assessment, planning, and development; table top exercises; and resilience-enhancing activities. In its identification of community strengths, CART encourages an assets-based approach to community development in which communities seek to use their capacities to address their challenges.
Perhaps the primary value of CART lies in its ability to stimulate analysis, communication, and action, and in its contribution to community participation, community self-awareness, critical reflection, skill development, and collaboration. Thus CART is as much a method as a measure.
College and University Participation in CART
Colleges and universities can use CART in one or more ways. CART is ideally suited to service learning projects and practicum experiences. It can also be used at the undergraduate level as the basis for college research projects in which students are required to learn about human research protections, sampling techniques, survey development, interviewing, implementation of focus groups, and/or data analysis. CART is particularly appropriate as part of courses in community development and can be used to gather data about a local community. In its most elemental use, CART provides information for discussions about and an understanding of communities, community assessment, community resilience, current events, disasters, and disaster management. Research opportunities may be available for graduate students interested in more rigorous projects associated with community resilience.
Benefits of Using CART
When used as a course activity or assignment, the CART process/exercise generates a consciousness of community resilience and it provides opportunities to develop and practice communication, teamwork, and networking skills. CART can enhance critical thinking and demonstrate the importance of data in decision making and community action. It can also improve student appreciation of various community stakeholders and their roles and responsibilities in general or, more specifically, in emergency management. All of these benefits associated with using CART as part of college coursework contribute to community resilience building.
More generally, participation in CART activities places the college or university within a social and community framework, fostering the integration of the institution within the local environment. The CART process provides a mechanism for colleges and universities to demonstrate that they are relevant to, and can lead, local initiatives. Involvement in CART constitutes an investment in the community while promoting social responsibility among students and within the institution.
Collaborating with the Terrorism and Disaster Center
TDC, which developed and sponsors CART, is extending an invitation to colleges and universities interested in collaboration on CART projects. TDC will provide CART survey and focus group instruments and instructions; supply training materials addressing community resilience, CART, survey interviewing, and focus groups; and assist in tailoring instruments for a specific application. TDC will offer a link for online administration of the survey and will analyze survey data and prepare written feedback based on survey results. Depending on the specific application and resources, TDC may also be able to help selected colleagues with community development activities related to CART.
Resource constraints make it necessary to limit involvement in CART to those best able to benefit from it. For those interested in implementing the survey and/or focus groups, this means having access to a community database (with postal or email addresses for mailing/emailing the survey) or the ability to canvass a community and conduct face-to-face interviews. Partners must be willing to share data and participate in evaluations of CART. They must also comply with human research protections as stipulated by the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center’s Institutional Review Board (IRB) as well as their own local college or university IRB.
Information about TDC is available on the World Wide Web at: http://tdc.ouhsc.edu or by telephone at 405 271-5121. Those interested specifically in CART can contact Rose Pfefferbaum, Ph.D., M.P.H., by email at rose.pfefferbaum@pcmail.maricopa.edu or by telephone at 602 285-7587.
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