Los Angeles County Community Disaster Resilience Project

Community Resilience Toolkits

The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, in partnership with RAND, UCLA, Emergency Network of Los Angeles, and Loma Linda University developed and tested a community resilience toolkit as part of the larger Los Angeles County Community Disaster Resilience Project. The toolkit was designed for community coalitions to try out resilience building and see what worked for their residents.

The toolkit included the following components:

  • Psychological first aid
    “Listen, protect, connect,” a psychological first aid model used by lay persons to provide practical and social support and linkages to mental health services in emergencies.
  • Community mapping
    A tool used by local leaders to identify capacities to support CR programs and respond to emergencies and to locate vulnerable groups and identify risk factors for emergencies and public health threats.
  • Community engagement strategies
    Included principles of community engagement for CR and real life examples contextualizing these principles and strategies.
  • How to develop community leaders
    Resources for CR leaders from responder and other community agencies.
  • Training community field workers
    Tools for responder and community agency field staff for training of communities in CR.

Community resilience requires building neighbor to neighbor reliance and organizational connection.

RESILIENT COMMUNITIES

  • There are strong relationships between organizations
  • Organizations are ready and prepared to respond and recover
  • There are enough volunteers to help in a disaster
  • People can rely on each other (neighbor to neighbor)
  • Individuals/families have the knowledge to prepare for and respond to disaster

Testing the Toolkit

The toolkit was used in eight neighborhoods in LA County. For comparison, eight other neighborhoods pursued emergency preparedness “as usual.” This allowed the project to identify what worked to strengthen resilience to disasters.

More Info

The project specifically tested four of the eight levers of resilience:

  • Partnership
    Bringing government and nongovernmental partners together
  • Engagement
    Making sure traditionally at-risk populations are fully integrated and leading planning
  • Education
    Integrating ongoing disaster education in routine activities. Making sure residents and organizations have information about preparedness, response and recovery.
  • Self-sufficiency
    Building a sense of self-reliance among community members—neighbor to neighbor reliance and organizational readiness

For more information on the LACCDR initiative, or to see the Resilience Builder toolkit, visit laresilience.org or bereadyla.org.