When Mark Keim was a pre-med student, his home was leveled by a tornado. The gabled house in Marion, Illinois, had no basement to shelter in, so he and his wife evacuated.
The experience motivated Keim, MD, MBA, to devote his career in medicine to emergency health, which strives to prevent disaster-related injury, illness and death. In a new APHA Press book, “Emergency Health: Practical Application of Public Health Principles,” Keim offers a primer on the subject, describing the public health principles that form its basis.
On the day the tornado hit Marion in 1982, 10 lives were lost. Keim often says he and his wife were saved by knowledge. As Keim tells it, he knew about tornadoes thanks to a book he had read as a child.
Knowledge of how to avoid disaster, and taking action on that knowledge, is key to individual and community readiness in the face of extreme weather events, he said.
“The more we decentralize this and make it about individuals and children and families, the better,” Keim told The Nation’s Health.
Keim is chief executive officer of DisasterDoc LLC, an international firm that consults and educates on public health emergencies. He spent more than a decade working on emergency preparedness at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and served on the federal Subcommittee for Disaster Reduction from 2006 to 2015.
The public health field can do more to stem human loss from environmental disasters, which include floods, hurricanes, tsunamis and toxic chemical leaks, according to Keim. The same concerted effort that is given to addressing infectious disease needs to be applied to preventing injury and illness from environmental disasters, he said.
Keim’s new book seeks to give disaster prevention and preparedness the same weight as emergency response. It explores ways to protect people in tornado-prone areas; in earthquake, hurricane and flood zones; on coastlines experiencing risings seas and tsunamis; and in other disaster scenarios.
Taking social determinants of health into account is important for preventing health harm, Keim said. Data on health care access, neighborhood employment, race, ethnicity and other factors can eliminate or reduce a disaster’s toll on human health and mortality. The 1995 Chicago heat wave, for example, took over 700 lives, many of whom were poor and elderly and living in neighborhoods at risk for high heat.
“Disasters occur over a period of time, not at a point in time,” Keim said. “The solution, in my opinion, is upstream. It’s starting to identify that there are social determinants of health, and address disasters in the same way public health prevents other illnesses and causes of death.”
For more information on “Emergency Health: Practical Application of Public Health Principles,” visit www.aphabookstore.org.
- Copyright The Nation’s Health, American Public Health Association
