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Fall/Winter 2013
When the CDC awarded a grant to study health effects of Hurricane Sandy, the Center for Disaster Medicine rose to the occasion—and in the process, burnished its well-earned reputation as a resource for disaster training and data collection.
A PROBLEM IN OUR OWN BACK By Andrea Kott, M.P.H.
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hey were do-it-yourselfers, the ad-hoc group of New York City homeowners and volunteers who, with neither safety training nor equipment, gutted mold- and sewageinfested homes in the wake of flooding from Hurricane Sandy. In an effort to protect these lay workers from illness and injury, the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH), in partnership with Hunter College and Rutgers University, launched a worker safety training program to show them how to handle contaminated debris. Now, the health of these do-it-yourselfers—and the effectiveness of the worker safety training—are the focus of a landmark two-year study by the College’s Center for Disaster Medicine (CDM). With more than $560,000 from the Centers from Disease Control and Prevention— the largest research grant the Center has ever received—the CDM will study the health effects of exposure to mold and other environmental contaminants, and evaluate the effectiveness of the health department’s public health intervention to minimize subsequent illness and injury. The Center for Disaster Medicine, part of the Institute of Public Health in the School of Health Sciences and Practice (SHSP), was established in 2005, to improve the region’s