DisastersProfessor to help fashion New York disaster preparedness policies

When New York governor Andrew Cuomo looked over the devastation Hurricane Sandy did to Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn, he knew this should not be allowed to happen again. Cuomo also knew who to hire to make sure the city is secure.

Irwin Redlener, the director and founder of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at the Mailman School of Public Health, has been appointed as the co-chair of the New York Ready Commission, which Mayor Michael Bloomberg established after Hurricane Sandy hit the city.

The Columbia Spectator reportsthat Redlener is a a pediatrician who founded the Children’s Health Fund, a non-profit organization which provided health care to underprivileged children. In 2003 Allen Rosenfield, who was the dean of the Mailman School at the time, asked Redlener to join Columbia’s staff.

“There had been some work being done on disaster readiness prior to my getting to Columbia,” Redlener told the Columbia Spectator. “But the dean had asked me to really expand our work and elevate what we were doing to become a national leader in this field.”

In January, after evaluating New York’s current preparedness policies, the commission gave its recommendations on how to get the state prepared for future weather-related disasters.

“I was initially very concerned that, because the timeline was so short, it would be impossible to do,” Redlener told the Spectator. “It turns out that I was wrong.”

The final set of recommendations will be given to  Cuomo in a few weeks and will include methods to improve the infrastructure of health care facilities and improving the city subway system so it does not have to be shut down during a storm.

Redlener and researchers at the National Center for Disaster Preparedness have a wealth of experience when it comes to improving infrastructure.

“What the center does is help examine the level of readiness or preparedness for all kinds of disasters,” Redlener told the Spectator. “We try to use research to figure out the best solutions for some of the challenges that come with preparing ourselves for the disasters.”

The center is funded by the Center for Disease Control and Preventionand focuses on post-disaster climates, system readiness, disaster recovery, vulnerable populations, and citizen engagement.

“When we speak of recovery, we are not just discussing the rebuilding of infrastructure,” Karen Levin, the center’s associate director of planning and response and the director of the Columbia Regional Learning Center, told the Spectator. “We are bringing the lens down on long-term impact of disasters on populations.”

The center’s goal is to change policies to get the nation read for any disaster it might encounter.

“Our aim is to take our research findings to the practice side of preparedness response to influence policy, which allows us to contribute directly to the overarching goals of our nation’s national health security goals,” Levin told the Spectator.

Redlener acknowledged that recommending changes is one thing, but getting policymakers to make changes is a whole different story.

“It doesn’t happen naturally or automatically,” Redlener said. “I think we’re spending an increasing amount of time trying to figure out how we transfer the research into public policy.”