Children and Disasters

Abstract

Although researchers have studied children’s reactions to disaster since the 1940s, this subfield has expanded tremendously over the past decade. In fact, nearly half of all studies on children and disaster have been published since 2010, and most of this recent scholarship has focused on a limited number of large-scale catastrophic events. This chapter highlights six major waves of research on children and disaster, including contributions to our understanding of (1) the effects of disaster on children’s mental health and behavioral reactions; (2) disaster exposure as it relates to physical health and well-being; (3) social vulnerability and sociodemographic characteristics; (4) the role of institutions and socio-ecological context in shaping children’s pre- and post-disaster outcomes; (5) resiliency, strengths, and capacities; and (6) children’s voices, perspectives, and actions across the disaster lifecycle. Throughout, the chapter emphasizes advances in methods, theory, policy, and practice. It concludes with recommendations for future research.

Full text

13
Children and Disasters
Lori Peek, David M. Abramson, Robin S. Cox,
Alice Fothergill and Jennifer Tobin
Contents
13.1 Introduction.................................................... 243
13.2 Chapter Overview ......................................... 244
13.3 Definitions ....................................................... 244
13.4 Approach and Limitations............................ 245
13.5 Foundational Studies and Publication Pat-
terns on Children and Disasters .................. 246
13.6 Children and Disaster Research: Past,
Present, and Future Directions .................... 247
13.6.1 Wave 1: Assessing Children’s Psy-
chological and Behavioral Reactions
to Disaster........................................... 247
13.6.2 Wave 2: Understanding Children’s
Exposure and Physical Health
Outcomes ............................................ 249
13.6.3 Wave 3: Characterizing Social Vul-
nerability and Considering Sociode-
mographic Characteristics................... 250
13.6.4 Wave 4: Placing Children in Broader
Socio-ecological Context.................... 251
13.6.5 Wave 5: Understanding Children’s
Resilience, Strengths, and Capacities. 252
13.6.6 Wave 6: Centering Children’s Voices,
Perspectives, Actions, and Rights ...... 252
13.7 Advancements ................................................ 253
13.7.1 Theoretical Contributions ................... 253
13.7.2 Methodological Contributions ............ 254
13.7.3 Policy Implications ............................. 254
13.8 Future Directions and Enduring
Questions ........................................................ 255
13.9 Conclusion ...................................................... 257
References .................................................................. 257
13.1 Introduction
Children’s experiences with and exposure to
disaster and other adverse events can plant the
seeds for far-reaching physical, cognitive, and
emotional changes that may not reveal them-
selves fully for decades (Laplante et al., 2004;
Shonkoff et al., 2012). Socially, children are
embedded in a number of caretaking relation-
ships—within families, peer groups, schools, and
many other organizations and institutions in their
lives—that may either buffer or exacerbate the
effects of disaster (Fothergill & Peek, 2015).
Ecologically, children’s capacity to grow and
thrive is often contingent upon a supportive
balance of these caregivers, networks, and insti-
tutions, all within the broader context of a child’s
built, natural, and cultural environment (Abram-
son, Park, Stehling-Ariza, & Redlener, 2010a;
Noffsinger, Pfefferbaum, Pfefferbaum, Sherrieb,
& Norris, 2012; Weems & Overstreet, 2008).
Children and disasters is an emerging subfield
of disaster studies which has contributed to a
number of disciplines—sociology, psychology,
geography, anthropology, political science, and
public health, to name a few—as well as to the
field itself. In turn, these disciplines have shaped
L. Peek (&)J. Tobin
University of Colorado, Boulder, USA
e-mail: Lori.Peek@colorado.edu
D.M. Abramson
New York University, New York City, USA
R.S. Cox
Royal Roads University, Victoria, Canada
A. Fothergill
University of Vermont, Burlington, USA
©Springer International Publishing AG 2018
H. Rodríguez et al. (eds.), Handbook of Disaster Research, Handbooks of Sociology
and Social Research, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63254-4_13
243

the study of children and disasters through
methodological and theoretical advancements
that have helped scholars better understand,
develop, and expand this area of research. Indeed,
these different disciplinary approaches to study-
ing children and disasters reveal why some chil-
dren may be more vulnerable, or resilient, than
others to the deleterious effects of extreme events.
The study of children and disasters is partic-
ularly meaningful because the imbalance caused
by disasters sheds light on many aspects of
human development, as well as on the complex
adaptive systems involved in protecting, educat-
ing, and empowering children. Work in this area,
as with much of disaster research, represents a
deeply practical undertaking: the insights gained
can help families, communities, and entire
nations better prepare for, mitigate, and respond
to events that threaten the health and welfare of
current and future generations. It also informs
leaders and decision makers regarding how best
to allocate resources and better engage children
and their families before, during, and after dis-
asters. The ultimate goal of much of this work is
to bring together multiple actors to reduce the
risks children face while preparing them to live in
a rapidly changing and increasingly turbulent
social, economic, and natural environment
(Hayward, 2012).
13.2 Chapter Overview
Disaster studies have moved in new and exciting
directions in the decade since the publication of
the Handbook of Disaster Research (Rodríguez,
Quarantelli, & Dynes, 2006). Most relevant to
the topic at hand, the first edition did not offer a
chapter on children and disasters, nor did it
include index entries for “children”or “youth.”
The decision to dedicate an entire chapter to this
population group in the second edition of the
Handbook is in response, in part, to the rapidly
growing number of social science studies
focused on children in disaster.
In this chapter, we draw upon our review of
literature on children and disasters, with an
emphasis on the recent dramatic expansion in
this area of study. Our overarching goal is to
provide an overview of the substantive contri-
butions of scholarship on children and disasters.
Through this process, our specific objective is to
identify major empirical, theoretical, and
methodological trends and patterns. After read-
ing the chapter, our hope is that others will
understand the major contributions of this area of
study—both for the field of disaster research and
practice, and for the social sciences more gen-
erally—while also recognizing the need for new
lines of inquiry and approaches.
We begin by defining key concepts that frame
this chapter and by describing our approach to
reviewing the literature. Next, we offer a sum-
mary of publication patterns associated with
children and disasters; here we underscore the
growth in this subfield and highlight how a rel-
atively limited number of large-scale catastrophic
events have served to spur research in this area.
We then turn to six major waves of research that
have been most prevalent over time. These
include contributions to enhanced understanding
of (1) the effects of disaster on children’s mental
health and behavioral reactions; (2) disaster
exposure as it relates to physical health and
well-being; (3) social vulnerability and sociode-
mographic characteristics; (4) the role of insti-
tutions and socio-ecological context in shaping
children’s pre- and post-disaster outcomes;
(5) resiliency, strengths, and capacities; and
(6) children’s voices, perspectives, and actions
across the disaster lifecycle. We also emphasize
advancements in methods, theory, policy, and
practice, and offer suggestions for future direc-
tions in research.
13.3 Definitions
Children and disasters are the central focus of this
chapter, and accordingly, we begin by defining
each in turn, with the acknowledgement that these
are, and have long been, contested terms. The
United Nations Convention on the Rights of the
Child, which was first adopted and ratified on
November 20, 1989, says that a child is anyone
below the age of 18 (Office of the United Nations
244 L. Peek et al.

High Commissioner for Human Rights, 1989). In
the United States, the Census Bureau and various
other government agencies also define children as
people under the age of 18. The United Nations
defines youth as those aged 15–24.
1
Disaster researchers most often use the gen-
eral terms “children”or “children and youth,”
while also differentiating between categories
based on chronological age and stage of devel-
opment. For example, emergency management
plans may distinguish between infants, very
young children, elementary school age children,
and adolescents, teens, and/or youth and young
adults (Peek, 2012a). In practice, as well as in
social vulnerability scholarship, children are
often defined as “at risk,”“special needs,”or a
“vulnerable population”(see Thomas, Phillips,
Lovekamp, & Fothergill, 2013). They are sub-
sequently grouped together with women, racial
and ethnic minorities, the elderly, persons with
disabilities, the medically dependent, persons
with special transportation needs, and/or persons
with limited proficiency in the dominant
language.
Disaster is likewise a contested term (Perry &
Quarantelli, 2005). In this chapter, we follow
Kreps (1984: 312) in defining disasters as “events,
observable in time and space, in which societies or
their larger subunits (e.g., communities, regions)
incur physical damages and losses and/or disrup-
tion of their routine functioning. Both the causes
and consequences of these events are related to the
social structures and processes of societies or their
subunits”(for further discussion, see Perry in this
Handbook). The vast majority of studies reviewed
for the present chapter focus on events that would
fall into the following categories: natural disasters
(i.e., geophysical, hydro-meteorological, and cli-
matological events including earthquakes, land-
slides, floods, hurricanes, and tornadoes);
technological accidents (i.e., hazardous, chemi-
cal, or nuclear releases, oil spills, train derai lments,
vehicle accidents, and power outages); violent acts
(i.e., war, terrorist attacks, mass kidnappings); and
multiple events or all-hazards (i.e., scholarship
that addresses multiple hazards or that takes an
all-hazards approach). It is worth noting that
scholarship on school shootings—incidents that
would be categorized as violent acts—remains
largely disconnected from the children and disas-
ters literature.
13.4 Approach and Limitations
This chapter draws upon a limited systematic
review (Grant & Booth, 2009) of the social and
behavioral science literature on children and
disaster. The purpose of this review was twofold.
First, we wanted to establish how and in what
ways the subfield of children and disaster
research has grown over time. Second, we set out
to identify the major trends in research that have
shaped the study of children and disasters as well
as the broader field of disaster research.
To conduct our literature search, we used Web
of Science and Social Sciences Abstracts via
ProQuest. We used the keywords *children and
disaster*
2
and searched across all time cate-
gories. We then narrowed the results within the
databases by focusing on peer-reviewed journal
articles, books, and reports published in the
English language (conference papers and book
reviews were excluded from the search).
The research team organized the search results
by decade using the following categories:
(1) publication title; (2) year of publication;
(3) author(s); (4) journal/publisher;
(5) volume/issue; (6) page numbers; (7) full
1
See Fothergill and Peek (2015, Appendix A) for a
discussion of the definitional complexity surrounding the
terms children and youth in disaster studies.
2
The following factors informed our final decision to
focus on “children”rather than “children and youth”in
our literature search and review. First, our initial searches
using the terms *children and disaster* and *children and
youth and disaster* returned many duplicate results. This
is because many of the studies with *children and
disaster* as keywords also included *youth* as a
keyword. Second, the diverse use of the term *youth*
limited its utility as a search term in this review (see
www.un.org/esa/socdev/documents/youth/fact-sheets/
youth-definition.pdf). Third, the sheer volume of results
returned for *children and disaster* combined with the
timeframe available to review the studies made it
unfeasible to conduct a second systematic review of
additional publications of youth and disaster.
13 Children and Disasters 245

citation; (8) abstract; (9) keywords; and
(10) search engine. Once the publications were
entered into the file, we completed a second review
to eliminate duplicate publications and those
studies that upon reading the abstract and full text
did not actually focus on children and disasters.
We also added additional columns for inventory-
ing the studies,
3
including: (11) disaster type (i.e.,
natural, technological, violent acts, and multiple or
all-hazards); (12) disaster event(s) studied;
(13) sociodemographic variables considered (i.e.,
age of the child, race/ethnicity, gender, disability);
(14) geographic location of the study; (15) theo-
retical approach; (16) methodological approach;
(17) data source(s) and data type(s);
(18) cross-sectional or longitudinal design;
(19) disciplinary focus; and (20) comments from
members of the research team.
Our approach to compiling and reviewing the
literature on children and disasters offers partic-
ular benefits. First, the content indexed in Web of
Science and Social Sciences Abstracts via Pro-
quest represent a substantial portion of the
peer-reviewed research published in disciplines
that focus on the study of children and disasters.
These databases are highly regarded in academic
research and include the largest catalogue of
English language disciplinary and interdisci-
plinary research over the past 100 years. Second,
searching the terms *children and disaster* cap-
tured the most references across disciplines. This
allowed our research team to better understand
the breadth of research that has been published
over the decades. Third, cataloguing the refer-
ences on children and disaster in a data file
allowed our multidisciplinary team to systemat-
ically identify changing trends and patterns in the
field.
As with any review, there are limitations to
our approach. For instance, our decision to
search only two scholarly databases potentially
excluded important articles published in other
fields (e.g., medicine, education, and engineer-
ing) that may only be found in disciplinary
specific databases such as PubMed, ERIC, and
Engineering Source, respectively. In addition, by
using two databases and setting our search
parameters for peer-reviewed journal articles,
books, and reports, we excluded many non-peer
reviewed publications. Similarly, by focusing on
English language publications we eliminated a
growing and important body of work on children
and disasters published in other languages. By
using the search terms *children and disaster* we
may have excluded important organizational
studies, such as those focused on the role of
pediatric healthcare facilities in emergency pre-
paredness, response, and recovery. Even with
these limitations in mind, the database we com-
piled suggested major trends within the children
and disasters realm.
13.5 Foundational Studies
and Publication Patterns
on Children and Disasters
The first relevant entry from our search appeared
in print in 1945 and was published by the U.S.
Office of Education, Federal Security Agency. It
was concerned with securing “authentic infor-
mation”for schools and educators on behalf of
children in the United States regarding the effects
of World War II and the resultant enemy occu-
pation of countries in Europe and Asia. While
this study focuses on the “suffering”of “less
fortunate fellows”and the “tragic casualties”of
war, it also offers “renewed appreciation of the
valiant manner in which youth of character meets
disaster.”As described below, these themes of
vulnerability and capacity echo throughout the
subsequent decades.
Other foundational works, all published in the
1950s, also established key scholarly themes that
would inform research trajectories over time. For
example, early studies elaborated on the role of
schools (Perry & Perry, 1959) and the family
(Chapman, 1957; Perry & Perry, 1959; Young,
1954) in shaping children’s responses to disaster,
with a specific focus on parent-child interactions
in the disaster aftermath (Silber, Perry, & Bloch,
1958). Other research from this period examined
3
Page limitations prohibit a full accounting of the
literature inventory, although it informed every aspect of
this chapter.
246 L. Peek et al.

evacuation behavior of children and families
(Anonymous, 1957) and emotional reactions of
children to disaster (Bloch, Silber, & Perry,
1956). This formative research for the subfield
was conducted by initial field research teams in
response to two disasters, the 1953 Vicksburg
Tornado and the 1953 North Sea Flood.
Our search for studies on children and disaster
resulted in 1,657 unique publication entries,
which appeared in print between 1945 and 2016.
As shown in Fig. 13.1, fewer than 100 peer
reviewed studies on children and disaster were
published between 1945 and 1989. Publications
in this area multiplied beginning in the 1990s,
with the largest increase occurring in the most
recent decade beginning in 2010. Quite notably,
nearly half of all publications on children and
disaster have appeared in print in just the last six
years.
4
Over the past eight decades, most research on
children and disasters has taken an “all-hazards”
approach or has focused on natural disasters.
Furthermore, a large proportion of available
publications have involved the study of a rela-
tively limited number of large-scale events. The
major events that have received the most frequent
and sustained attention in the published literature
on children and disaster include: the Chernobyl
Nuclear Release (1986); Hurricane Hugo (1989);
Hurricane Andrew (1992); the Oklahoma City
Bombing (1995); the 9/11 Terrorist Attacks
(2001); the Indian Ocean Earthquake and Tsu-
nami (2004); Hurricane Katrina (2005); the
Victoria, Australia Bushfires (2009); and the
Haiti Earthquake (2010). While most research in
this subfield is cross-sectional in design (Pfef-
ferbaum & North, 2008), the aforementioned
events are also the ones that have been most
likely to generate longitudinal studies following
child cohorts over time.
13.6 Children and Disaster
Research: Past, Present,
and Future Directions
In reviewing the numerous studies that have been
published over the past several decades on chil-
dren and disaster, we identified six major waves
of research (see Fig. 13.2). In the sections below,
we briefly describe each wave and summarize
key associated themes. Throughout, we reference
publications that are illustrative of the particular
wave as well as highlight the dominant approa-
ches within a given wave.
It is important to note that these waves are not
discretely sequential but instead are overlapping;
the introduction of a new wave of research does
not mean that a prior wave of work ended.
Instead, new waves began in earnest as more
longstanding waves continued unabated.
13.6.1 Wave 1: Assessing Children’s
Psychological
and Behavioral
Reactions to Disaster
The vast majority of published and cited litera-
ture on children and disasters focuses on chil-
dren’s emotional and behavioral responses to
extreme events (La Greca, Silverman, Vernberg,
& Prinstein, 1996; Norris, Friedman, & Watson,
2002a, Norris et al., 2002b; Wright, Masten, &
Narayan, 2013). Researchers working in this
domain tend to draw on mainstream psycholog-
ical theory and contextual theories of exposure
(Weems et al., 2010) and have long used stan-
dardized scales to measure traumatic reactions to
disaster and associated symptoms such as intense
fear, disorganized and agitated behavior, emo-
tional numbness, and anxiety (Veenema &
Schroeder-Bruce, 2002). Increasingly, research-
ers are also studying other dimensions of mental
and emotional health including depression
(Kanter, 2010; Lai, Auslander, Fitzpatrick, &
4
The dramatic rise in the number of publications on
children and disaster may reflect broader trends related to
publishing, including the increase in the number of
journals focusing on disasters as well as those dedicated
to child and youth studies. The increase may also be due
to the number of catastrophic events that have affected
large numbers of children over the past several years, and
the body of the research that has been generated in turn.
Regardless of what is driving the increase, there has been
a clear and sharp upward trend in the number of
child-specific disaster publications.
13 Children and Disasters 247

Podkowirow, 2014a, Lai, La Greca, & Llabre,
2014b), serious emotional disturbance (Abram-
son et al., 2010a), and suicidal ideation (Tang
et al., 2010).
Most of the available work on children’s
emotional health in disasters is, for obvious
reasons, conducted during the response and
recovery phases. However, major changes have
occurred in this particular wave including a shift
from a heavy reliance on parental and teacher
assessments of children’s post-disaster mental
health, to a stronger emphasis on direct
assessments administered to children themselves
within home and classroom environments (La
Greca, 2006; Lai, Esnard, Lowe, & Peek, 2016);
more longitudinal research designs and associ-
ated measures that assess mental health outcomes
at multiple points in time (Chen & Wu, 2006;
McFarlane, 1987); movement from convenience
sampling to representative probability-based
sampling techniques; integration of geospatial
and secondary data to compare stress reactions of
exposed children to non-exposed children in
different places (Taormina et al., 2008); and the
1
5
0
12
76
367
372
824
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900
1940-49
1950-59
1960-69
1970-79
1980-89
1990-99
2000-09
2010-16
Total Publications
Fig. 13.1 Number of publications on children and disasters
Wave 1:
Assessing
Children's
Psychological
and Behavioral
Reactions to
Disaster
Wave 2:
Understanding
Children's
Exposure and
Physical Health
Outcomes
Wave 3:
Characterizing
Social
Vulnerability
and
Considering
Socio-
demographic
Characteristics
Wave 4:
Placing
Children in
Broader Socio-
ecological
Context
Wave 5:
Revealing
Children's
Resilience,
Strengths, and
Capacities
Wave 6:
Centering
Children's
Voices,
Perspectives,
and Actions
Fig. 13.2 Major waves of research on children and disaster
248 L. Peek et al.

use of genetic markers (La Greca, Lai, Joormann,
Auslander, & Short, 2013a) and a variety of other
factors (Lai, La Greca, Auslander, & Short,
2013) in predicting risk and resilience among
diverse child cohorts. In addition, studies are
now more likely to include assessments of social
support, adaptive coping strategies and styles,
and other protective mechanisms and resources
that may buffer against the most severe effects of
disasters (Paardekooper, de Jong, & Hermanns,
1999; Pfefferbaum et al., 2012a, Pfefferbaum,
Noffsinger, & Wind, 2012b; Wright et al., 2013).
Researchers have long been interested in
assessing how disasters influence children’s
behaviors in the home, within peer groups, and in
school (Stuber et al., 2005). Indeed, mental
health experts recognize that one of the primary
ways that psychological distress is expressed
after a disaster is through behavioral reactions or
the externalizing of mental health symptoms and
responses (La Greca et al., 1996; Pynoos et al.,
1993). Various negative behavioral reactions
have been studied after disaster and, when dis-
aggregated by age, have revealed substantial
differences between infants, toddlers, young
children, and adolescents (for summaries see
Norris et al., 2002a,b; Peek, 2008). For instance,
while very young children may experience
regressive behaviors such as bed wetting, hitting,
or otherwise acting out, adolescents and teens are
more likely to engage in high-risk behaviors such
as drinking, drug use, and unprotected sexual
activity (Maclean, Popovici, & French, 2016).
Disasters may also influence children’s ability
to focus on schoolwork and may create or
amplify behavioral issues within classrooms.
Research has shown that school-aged children
who are displaced for extended periods of time
after a disaster tend to have higher dropout rates,
to receive lower grades and lower testing scores,
and to suffer from other educational and behav-
ioral problems (Fothergill & Peek 2015;La
Greca, 2006; Masten & Narayan, 2012). Much of
the work on children’s educational attainment in
the aftermath of disaster has been conducted
during the short- and longer-term recovery pha-
ses; a limited number of rigorous studies have
drawn on pre-existing educational data to assess
how disasters have affected a number of behav-
ioral and educational outcomes.
13.6.2 Wave 2: Understanding
Children’s Exposure
and Physical Health
Outcomes
The spaces where children live, go to school,
play, and work may expose them to elevated
levels of risk before, during, and after a disaster.
Mounting evidence now even suggests that
children exposed in utero to moderately severe to
severe levels of stress caused by disaster may
experience serious developmental consequences
(Charil, Laplante, Vaillancourt, & King, 2010;
Laplante et al., 2004; Laplante, Brunet, Schmitz,
Ciampi, & King, 2008).
Environmental health assessments and epi-
demiological studies suggest that children who are
exposed to lead (Pb) and other environmental con-
taminants may suffer a number of neurobehavioral
impairments throughout the life course (Healey,
2009). Exposure to polluted air, water, and soil is
especially dangerous for young children, and may
result in acute as well as chronic health problems
(Xu et al., 2012). In fact, according to the World
Health Organization (WHO), more than one in four
deaths of children under 5 years of age are attribu-
table to unhealthy environments. Further, approxi-
mately 1.7 million children under age 5 die each
year due to environmental risks, and climate change
will exacerbate the challenges that young children
face (WHO, 2017).
When disasters strike, children may be killed
or injured due to a variety of causes (see Roberts,
Huang, Crusto, & Kaufman, 2014; Thabet,
Ibraheem, Shivram, Winter, & Vostanis, 2009).
In one of the only studies available on child
mortality in U.S. disasters, Zahran, Peek, and
Brody (2008) found that extreme cold and
extreme heat were the mostly deadly hazards for
children and that boys across all age cohorts were
more likely to perish than girls. Still, estimating
child mortality in disaster events is challenging,
both because there is no standardized global
disaster mortality data (Borden & Cutter, 2008)
13 Children and Disasters 249

and because available data are rarely disaggre-
gated for child populations age 0–18 years.
Additionally, the deadliest hazards for given
populations change across time and space. For
example, pandemics claimed the most lives
globally in the early 20th century whereas
droughts and heat waves have resulted in the
highest disaster mortality rates since the
mid-1900’s (Roser, 2016). In places like the
United States, Japan, and New Zealand, child
mortality in earthquakes, for example, has fallen
dramatically during the 20th century, largely due
to state-of-the-art seismic design, enhanced
building codes, and stringent code enforcement.
In other places, like China, Pakistan, and Haiti,
tens of thousands of children lost their lives when
their schools and homes collapsed in seismic
events (Hu, Wang, Li, Ren, & Zhu, 2011).
In addition to direct physical exposure to disas-
ter, a growing number of studies have focused on
secondary shocks that follow disaster events and
further endanger children. For instance, Biswas,
Rahman, Mashreky, Rahman, and Dalal (2010)
examined children who sustained injuries due to
abuse at the hands of adult caregivers after disaster.
Lai et al. (2014a,b) documented a rise in sedentary
activity among children after disaster. Researchers
have also examined longer-term physical health
concerns among children and parents living in
communities contaminated as a consequence of
technological disaster, such as the 2010 Deepwater
Horizon oil spill (Abramson et al., 2013)andthe
1986 Chernobyl Nuclear Release (Yablokov,
2009). Thomas et al. (2008) studied respiratory
problems and post-event asthma diagnoses among
children exposed to the dust cloud following the
collapse of the World Trade Center Towers on
September 11, 2001.
13.6.3 Wave 3: Characterizing Social
Vulnerability and
Considering
Sociodemographic
Characteristics
Social science research on children and disasters
has increased markedly over the past decade, and
much of this work has been framed using a social
vulnerability approach.
5
Social vulnerability
scholarship has a rich intellectual history that
links historical and economic root causes of
disaster to current unsafe conditions to help
explain the progression of vulnerability among
particular people in specific geographic places
(Wisner, Blaikie, Cannon, & Davis, 2004).
Because children have increasingly been recog-
nized as a potentially vulnerable population, they
now regularly appear on lists that emergency
managers and public health responders use when
attempting to conduct rapid needs assessments
after disaster or to prepare populations before an
event occurs. Social vulnerability scholars use
quantitative, qualitative, and geospatial methods
to understand the social, political, environmental,
and economic factors that place children in
harm’s way and the ways that loss and suffering
may unfold in their lives in the short and
longer-term aftermath of disaster (for an over-
view, see Peek, 2008).
Although scholars have increasingly called for
more fine-grained analyses of children’s vulner-
ability and experiences in disaster (Masten &
Osofsky, 2010), much of the work that fits within
this wave does not disaggregate children’s
experiences by age, stage of development, race,
or gender. Instead, much of this scholarship
refers to “children”or “children and youth”as a
uniform category. This represents a challenge to
the progression of the subfield, as children of
different ages are obviously quite different
developmentally and thus have different needs
and vulnerabilities. This is equally true for chil-
dren with different national, racial, ethnic,
5
We think this increase is due, at least in part, to
Anderson’s(2005) appeal for more sociological disaster
research on children as well as to the publication of the
2008 special issue on children and disasters, which
appeared in the journal Children, Youth and Environ-
ments. Both Anderson’s seminal article where he asked
“Where are all the children and youths in social science
disaster research?”(p. 161) and the special issue used a
social vulnerability framework and encouraged research-
ers to look beyond the mental and physical health effects
of disaster to expand the subfield in more sociological
directions.
250 L. Peek et al.

gender, religious identities, sexual orientations,
socioeconomic backgrounds, and so forth.
Children and disaster scholarship written from
a social vulnerability perspective, at present, is
rarely explicitly intersectional in nature, meaning
that the work often does not account for the
dynamic interaction between important individ-
ual and social characteristics. This is not meant to
imply, however, that scholars ignore the impor-
tance of socio-demographic and socio-contextual
characteristics in shaping children’s pre- and
post-disaster experiences. Yet, when these char-
acteristics are considered, they are often treated
as control variables at the individual and house-
hold level. The work that is available has
revealed important interactions between a child’s
age at the time of disaster and other characteris-
tics such as racial minority status, disability,
gender, household composition, and recovery
conditions in the home and neighborhood (Green
et al., 1991; Peek & Stough, 2010; Weems et al.,
2010). These efforts have also helped to identify
certain characteristics of children most vulnera-
ble to negative outcomes following disaster
exposure (Lonigan, Shannon, Taylor, Finch, &
Sallee, 1994; Masten & Narayan, 2012). This
wave of research underscores the importance of
identifying and understanding the role of devel-
opment and developmental timing, gender, and a
range of other characteristics (e.g., cognitive
skills, personality, previous exposure, attachment
relationships) when assessing vulnerability for
children in disaster.
13.6.4 Wave 4: Placing Children
in Broader
Socio-ecological Context
Although children are at the center of the studies
we have reviewed for this chapter, they obvi-
ously do not exist in isolation. They are embed-
ded in families, peer networks, schools,
neighborhoods, communities, media and tech-
nology cultures, and political and economic
structures (Bronfenbrenner, 1986). While earlier
studies acknowledged this fact, research over the
past two decades has more explicitly drawn on
socio-ecological theory to place children and
youth in broader context.
Work associated with this wave has revealed
the roles that institutions play in children’s lives
before, during, and after a disaster. The family
and schools—as two of the most prominent
institutions in most children’s lives—have
received the most attention in the disaster litera-
ture historically and to date.
Parents, especially mothers, have been iden-
tified as key to helping children prepare for,
evacuate, and recover from disaster (Peek &
Fothergill, 2008). Research has also demon-
strated that parental mental health, particularly
the mother’s mental health status, is a significant
predictor of children’s physical and emotional
well-being after disaster (Lowe, Godoy, Rhodes,
& Carter, 2013; Tees et al., 2010). This research
emphasizes how children’s fates are closely tied
to the fates of their adult caregivers before, dur-
ing, and after disaster.
A growing body of work is now available on
the roles of schools and teachers in helping
children and families to prepare for and recover
from a variety of hazards events (U.S. Depart-
ment of Education, 2013; Johnston et al., 2016;
Tipler, Tarrant, Johnston, & Tuffin, 2016).
Schools have also been identified as important
sites for emotional and behavioral health inter-
ventions (Lai et al., 2016; Pfefferbaum et al.,
2012a,b). Childcare centers and after school
programs have been the focus of a more limited
number of studies, but these institutions have
received increased attention over the past decade
(Singh, Tuttle, & Bhaduri, 2015). This is due, in
part, to initiatives such as the U.S. Disaster
Report Card, published annually by the advocacy
group Save the Children, and by regulatory
reforms instituted more recently by the U.S.
Administration for Children and Families.
Research is beginning to emerge that exami-
nes the role of place attachment and place dis-
ruption in shaping the wellbeing, emotional
regulation, identity development, and self-esteem
of children in the home, school, and other
post-disaster contexts (Cox, Scannell, Heykoop,
Tobin-Gurley, & Peek, 2017; Scannell, Cox,
Fletcher, & Heykoop, 2016). Case studies of
13 Children and Disasters 251

Hurricane Katrina and other disasters have
revealed that children can experience disorien-
tation and diminished wellbeing as a result of
displacement from culturally familiar surround-
ings (Fothergill & Peek, 2012; Peek, 2012b;
Robinson & Brown, 2007). This includes studies
documenting increases in stress and stress-related
disorders (Wickrama & Kaspar, 2007); behav-
ioral problems (Reich & Wadsworth, 2008), and
other issues related to academic achievement,
cultural practices, and social relationships (Peek
& Richardson, 2010).
13.6.5 Wave 5: Understanding
Children’s Resilience,
Strengths,
and Capacities
Much of the available scholarship on children
and disasters has focused on assessing negative
responses and outcomes or their overall vulner-
ability before, during, and after disasters. At the
same time, there is ample evidence of children’s
resilience in times of disaster as well as some
limited, but growing, work on children’s capac-
ities and strengths.
Other scholars have completed impressive
reviews of the child resilience literature, which
we will not duplicate in detail here.
6
Recently,
Wright et al. (2013) published an updated
extensive review of the study of resilience, with a
focus on the key concepts and findings resulting
from four distinct waves of research over the past
four decades. Masten and Narayan (2012) and
Meyerson, Grant, Carter, and Kilmer (2011) have
also summarized the literature on posttraumatic
growth among children and adolescents.
In addition to this body of theoretically
informed and empirically rich research on chil-
dren’s resilience, scholars have begun to more
systematically document children’s strengths and
capacities. Anderson (2005: 162) called for work
in this area, saying that it was “crucial to
understand…what children do for themselves
and others to reduce disaster impacts.”There is
now more published evidence of the ways that
children help their peers, their family members,
their schools, organizations to which they
belong, and their communities before, during,
and after a disaster. For example, in their
research after Hurricane Katrina, Fothergill and
Peek (2015) offer a typology of ways that chil-
dren helped adults; children helped other chil-
dren; and children helped themselves after the
storm. A few examples among many of their
efforts included assisting relatives during evacu-
ation, caring for younger children in shelters, and
drawing, singing, and keeping journals to help
themselves cope. Tobin-Gurley et al. (2016)
explored gendered dynamics of helping behav-
iors among youth in communities affected by
wildfire, flooding, and a tornado, respectively.
Children and youth are now active in pre-
paredness activities around the globe, and
research has demonstrated that these efforts may
be especially effective if they link individual
preparedness with preparedness in schools and
communities (Ronan, Alisic, Towers, Johnson, &
Johnston, 2015; Ronan, Crellin, & Johnston,
2012). In the U.S., teens have the opportunity to
take part in various preparedness efforts spon-
sored by the Federal Emergency Management
Agency (FEMA, 2016) as well as to receive
disaster education through the American Red
Cross and other organizations. Internationally,
children are increasingly engaged in participatory
action projects aimed to enhance their strengths
and to build their personal and collective resi-
lience (Zeng & Silverstein, 2011).
13.6.6 Wave 6: Centering Children’s
Voices, Perspectives,
Actions, and Rights
Most recently, a wave of child-centered research
and child-led action-oriented initiatives has
emerged, which has further centered children’s
voices, perspectives, and activities (Towers,
6
Some of the most widely cited reviews and empirical
studies of children, resilience, and disasters include: Caffo
and Belaise (2003), Cryder, Kilmer, Tedeschi, and
Calhoun (2006), Masten (2015), Masten and Narayan
(2012), Masten and Obradovic (2008), Masten and
Osofsky (2010), and Zolkoski and Bullock (2012).
252 L. Peek et al.

Haynes, Sewell, Bailie, & Cross, 2014). Some of
the research has focused on the roles that chil-
dren can and do play in disaster risk reduction
and climate change adaptation across the globe
(Martin, 2010; Tanner, 2010). In addition, with
the introduction of the United Nation’s Con-
vention on the Rights of the Child, there has been
more explicit discussion of children’s human and
political rights in post-disaster contexts (see
Hayward, 2012).
This wave, perhaps more than any that came
before it, is distinguished by the diverse methods
and approaches that researchers and advocates
have used to work for and with children living at
risk and child disaster survivors. New creative
methods and participatory approaches have
allowed researchers and practitioners to under-
stand and highlight children’s stories and per-
spectives, while often developing
community-based engagement strategies with
an explicit goal for social justice (Fletcher et al.,
2016; Haynes & Tanner, 2015). This wave has
also been distinguished by its unabashed and
unapologetic concentration on child-led and
adult-led youth advocacy efforts (Cox et al, 2017;
Peek et al., 2016). This work, in particular, has
blurred the line between research and action with
social change as an ultimate goal.
13.7 Advancements
The research in the six waves illuminate sub-
stantive advancements in the area of children and
disaster. This section discusses how scholarship
on children and disasters often intersects with
and contributes to disaster studies and the social
sciences more generally while also highlighting
the theoretical, methodological, and policy
implications of this work.
13.7.1 Theoretical Contributions
Theoretical contributions to the subfield of chil-
dren and disasters sit at the nexus of many dis-
ciplines and areas of inquiry. As discussed in
Wave 1, psychologists were central to
establishing the subfield of children and disaster
studies and their work continues to have a strong
theoretical influence. Children and disaster
scholarship has also drawn from and contributed
to other theoretical and empirical lines of inquiry,
as further described below.
Research on children has expanded and enri-
ched the social vulnerability paradigm in disaster
studies. In line with other social vulnerability
scholarship, research on children has linked
vulnerability to economic, historical, structural,
and political root causes. This research has
highlighted the importance of examining social
forces, social structures, and access to resources
in the context of disasters. A growing body of
evidence has illustrated that children may be
more vulnerable to the deleterious health effects
of disaster and may suffer lifelong consequences
from major exposure to disaster, further under-
scoring the importance of examining this popu-
lation group across time.
This subfield has also used and expanded
social-ecological models that consider the influ-
ence of micro-, meso-, and macro-level social,
cultural, political, and economic forces in shap-
ing children’s lives. Work that employs this
theoretical lens reminds us that children are
embedded in various social and civic institutions,
which clearly have a powerful influence on how
they prepare for and recover from disasters.
Children have demonstrated resilience and
adaptive capacities to disaster, especially when
given the opportunity to contribute in meaningful
ways. Although the power of volunteerism and
the benefits of being actively included in com-
munity efforts has long been documented in the
disaster literature, the examination of children’s
roles and contributions allows for broader theo-
rizing about new skill sets and contributions from
different generations. Children, often identified
as vulnerable, passive, and even helpless, have
demonstrated that participation from all members
of a community is invaluable to disaster risk
reduction and individual and collective
resilience.
Just as we are seeing the field of disaster
studies align more closely with environmental
justice efforts and climate change research, there
13 Children and Disasters 253

has been an expansion of literature focusing on
child- and youth-based adaptive strategies and a
growing body of knowledge focusing on the
impacts of environmental- and war-based
migration patterns for refugee children (Sirin &
Rogers-Sirin, 2015). Continuing research in this
area is critical to solidify and learn from the
intersections between disasters, environmental
justice, and climate change.
13.7.2 Methodological Contributions
Scholars studying disasters have long utilized
traditional social scientific methods such as sur-
veys, qualitative interviews, focus groups, and
participant observation. Work in the subfield of
children and disasters adheres to this pattern, but
has also led to methodological advances in
numerous areas including psychological evalua-
tions and interventions in school-based settings
(La Greca, 2006; Lai et al., 2016), mobile,
child-led methods (Gibbs, Mutch, O’Connor, &
MacDougall, 2013), arts-based and creative
methods (Peek et al., 2016; Scannell et al., 2016),
participatory action research (Tanner, 2010), and
participatory mapping and video (Gaillard &
Pangilinan, 2010; Haynes & Tanner, 2015).
In their review of children and disaster mental
health research, Steinberg, Brymer, Steinberg,
and Pfefferbaum (2006) concluded that in order
to continue to advance the subfield, researchers
would need to increase the use of representative
samples, control groups, and longitudinal
designs. Pfefferbaum et al. (2013) conducted a
systematic review of methods used while study-
ing children in three major disasters. They found
that researchers are now using a more diverse set
of approaches including experimental designs
with control and randomization, hypothesis test-
ing, and intervention evaluations. Yet, they also
noted gaps in terms of the lack of longitudinal
research designs, the need for more focus on
biological stress reactions, and more careful
investigation of the role of family and commu-
nity in shaping children’s disaster recovery.
Researchers working in the subfield have
increasingly employed advanced statistical
techniques such as structural equation modeling
(Abramson, Stehling-Ariza, Park, Walsh, &
Culp, 2010b; McLaughlin et al., 2013) and latent
growth curve analyses (La Greca et al., 2013b).
All the while, scholars continue to draw on more
traditional ethnographic and mixed-methods
studies (Towers, 2015) to test and extend Bron-
fenbrenner’s foundational work on child
development.
13.7.3 Policy Implications
The 1989 United Nations Convention on the
Rights of the Child focused attention on the
responsibility of adults to protect the human
rights and welfare of children, while the 2011
Children’s Charter for Disaster Risk Reduction,
developed in consultation with more than 600
children in 21 countries, identified children’s
priorities for a child-centered approach to disas-
ter risk reduction. The growth of children and
disaster research has helped solidify the need to
better understand how children, adults, and entire
communities can and should better prepare for
and respond to disasters that threaten the health
and well-being of children. Moreover, the
majority of research outlined in the six waves has
an explicit goal to inform and influence policy
and practice to reduce the risks as well as the
harm and suffering experienced by children in
disasters.
Advancements in the subfield of children and
disasters have already led to many positive
changes in disaster policy and practice, such as
improved building codes and safety and pre-
paredness standards for child occupied buildings
and ongoing efforts to improve disaster educa-
tion, preparedness, response, and recovery
efforts. For example, the Federal Emergency
Management Agency (FEMA), the American
Red Cross, and the U.S. Department of Educa-
tion recently partnered to create a national strat-
egy that provides a clear vision for youth
preparedness. FEMA also has a webpage dedi-
cated to “children and disasters”that offers a
variety of preparedness, emergency management,
response, and recovery resources as well as
254 L. Peek et al.

information to help children cope with the neg-
ative effects of disaster.
In 2017, a bipartisan bill, the Homeland
Security for Children Act (H.R. 1372), was
introduced in the House of Representatives to
ensure that the needs of children are included in
the thinking and planning for a disaster
throughout the U.S. Department of Homeland
Security. Among other things, this bill directs
FEMA to include children in disaster response
planning and integrates House and Senate
Homeland Security committees into the process
of meeting children’s needs (Schlegelmilch &
Serino, 2017).
Globally, the United Nations International
Children’s Emergency Relief Fund (UNICEF)
responds to the needs of children in regions that
are most vulnerable to and hardest hit by emer-
gencies and disasters. These efforts are supple-
mented by the important work being done in
some of the most vulnerable communities and
countries by advocacy organizations such as
Save the Children, Plan International, and the
International Red Cross and Red Crescent
Societies.
13.8 Future Directions
and Enduring Questions
As scholarship on children and disasters has
continued to grow and expand, enduring chal-
lenges have remained and new questions have
emerged. We bring this chapter to a close with
some reflections on new directions for research
on children and disasters.
First, there remains a need for more explicitly
intersectional research, which helps to elucidate
how nationality, race, class/caste, gender, dis-
ability status, sexual orientation, immigrant sta-
tus, indigenous status, and many other diverse
characteristics shape children’s lives and experi-
ences in pre- and post-disaster contexts globally.
Although researchers are increasingly using more
sophisticated statistical models to control for
these characteristics, the dynamic ways in which
they interact and play out in young people’s lives
deserves more attention, as does the shifting
climatic, cultural, and economic contexts in
which children are coming of age (White, 2011).
Second, with the increased number of studies
focused on children’s strengths, capacities, and
actions, we see a need for more nuanced analyses
of how cultural, social, political, and technolog-
ical practices and values within communities and
broader societies influence children’s participa-
tion in disaster risk reduction and climate change
adaptation strategies. How do these different
structures encourage or constrain their voices,
actions, and involvement at the local and national
levels? Anderson (2005) previously observed
that children are often excluded from these very
conversations about hazards and disasters (and
other issues of social importance) because they
cannot vote and are rarely included in
decision-making processes. Yet, there has been
movement for a more inclusive child-centered
disaster risk reduction agenda in recent years,
such as the efforts witnessed at the Child and
Youth Forum of the Third United Nations World
Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction in Sen-
dai, Japan (Cumiskey, Hoang, Suzuki, Pettigrew,
& Herrgård, 2015). At that conference, young
people from around the world made their desire
to become critical players in disaster risk reduc-
tion apparent. How much systemic change will
result from that action is still an open question.
Third, we see a need for sustained support and
funding for life course research and other longi-
tudinal studies to capture the enduring impacts of
trauma on child-to-adult post-disaster trajectories
over time. The biological and psychological
sciences have long focused on how children age
and develop. Disaster research is equally inter-
ested in how the stress of calamitous events
disrupts conventional timelines and life course
development, for children, adults, and more
broadly for communities. Disaster events often
compel individuals, communities, and institu-
tions to rapidly rebuild their lives and routines in
what Olshansky, Hopkins, and Johnson (2012)
refer to as “time compression.”Altogether, such
a focus on time-varying effects of disasters is
perhaps most productively studied in children,
particularly with longitudinal study designs.
Children are acutely sensitive to time because
13 Children and Disasters 255

their own physical, emotional, and cognitive
development continues inexorably regardless of a
disaster’s stressors, and they may be particularly
sensitive to perturbations in their environment.
A disaster’s effect is likely to be revealed sooner
among children than adults; a 30-year time frame
can capture effects from prenatal exposure
through young adult life course transitions and
any number of critical developmental time points
in between. Furthermore, even in more abbrevi-
ated time spans, disaster research on children can
illuminate the effects of rapid changes on social
and civic institutional stability, as well as on
successful individual and collective adaptation
and coping strategies. These are emerging areas
of considerable interest in the broader field of
disaster studies, and represent especially fruitful
areas of scholarship in the subfield of children
and disaster studies.
Fourth, as underscored throughout this chap-
ter, mental health studies continue to predomi-
nate, and psychologists and psychiatrists are the
most often-cited scholars working in the children
and disaster space. We applaud this important
work and want to see it continue. At the same
time, we see a need for more disciplines and
more inter- and multidisciplinary teams to con-
duct research to push the boundaries of this field.
Engineers and social scientists, for instance, have
successfully partnered to assess where the most
unsafe school structures are located, and how this
varies by the sociodemographic characteristics of
the school children enrolled in the buildings.
Continuing to bring together experts from dif-
ferent disciplinary backgrounds will further
encourage new and exciting research questions.
Environmental justice scholars could help those
in disaster studies think more carefully about the
unequal distribution of risk and how this
increases children’s vulnerability. Gender schol-
ars could partner with disaster researchers to offer
more nuanced analyses of how boys and girls
experiences differ in pre- and post-disaster envi-
ronments. Educational researchers could design
longitudinal studies to assess how disasters
influence a variety of educational outcomes for
school-age children affected by disaster. Climate
change scholars might engage with disaster
researchers to explore how and where children
are experiencing the combined impacts of cli-
mate change and disasters and elucidate the
growing role of children and youth in climate
adaptation initiatives. The young median age of
many indigenous populations combined with a
growing acknowledgement of the value of local
knowledge and particularly of indigenous
knowledge practices, can and should prompt the
greater inclusion of and collaboration with
indigenous scholars. With the rising number of
children and youth under correctional supervi-
sion in the U.S., criminologists could partner
with vulnerability scholars to understand how
juvenile justice facilities prepare for disaster to
ensure that juvenile populations are not left
behind during a crisis.
Fifth, children are now considered “digital
natives”(Prensky, 2001), given that they are
born into a world marked by the rapid and
widespread dissemination of electronic informa-
tion through the web and various social media
platforms. For eight decades, children have been
the object and subject of many research studies.
However, casting them as digital natives also
recognizes their power and capacity as drivers
and creators of new knowledge and information,
especially in digital form. How, if at all, these
realities will shape their engagement with and
involvement in the hazards and disaster field
more generally is yet to be determined.
Sixth, there is a pressing need for more
scholarship that focuses on how key organiza-
tions and institutions produce (or reduce) risk in
children’s lives and promote (or hinder) resi-
lience. As Tierney (2014) observes, powerful
organizations and institutions socially produce
much of the risk that populations face. Yet, most
children and disaster scholarship focuses on the
individual child as the primary unit of analysis.
The family, childcare centers, schools, health-
care, religion, political structures, the juvenile
justice system, and other core organizations and
institutions that shape children’s lives and affect
risk levels warrant further study.
Seventh, as more interventions and policies
are established to protect, engage, and empower
children, there is a need for more
256 L. Peek et al.

evidence-informed evaluation research as well as
more policy-focused research to analyze how
current policy does, or does not, help reduce
children’s risk and speed their recovery in the
aftermath of disaster. Annual reports from Save
the Children, for instance, have repeatedly shown
that many childcare centers and schools across
the U.S. fail to meet basic preparedness stan-
dards. A study of a national sample of licensed
prehospital emergency medical service agencies
revealed that while most agencies (72.9%)
reported having a written plan for response to a
mass-casualty event, only 13.3% had such a plan
available for pediatric-specific mass-casualty
events (Shirm, Liggin, Dick, & Graham, 2007).
Evaluation research would help policy makers,
emergency managers, and other practitioners to
understand which programs are successful and
why (Catalano, Berglund, Ryan, Lonczak, &
Hawkins, 2004) and to assess whether educa-
tional interventions are actually working (John-
son, Johnston, Ronan, & Peace, 2014). The
National Commission on Children and Disasters
(2010) offered a series of policy recommenda-
tions to enhance the nation’s preparedness,
response, and recovery capacity for children and
families; there is a need for a systematic assess-
ment of the policy implementation that has, and
has not, followed from that seminal report.
13.9 Conclusion
This chapter summarized eight decades of
research by presenting six enduring and emerg-
ing waves of study on children, disaster, and
mental health and behavioral reactions; exposure
as it relates to physical health and well-being;
social vulnerability and sociodemographic char-
acteristics; socio-ecological context; resiliency,
strengths, and capacities; voices, perspectives,
and actions. Each new wave of research has
opened up novel lines of inquiry by individual
researchers as well as disciplinary and multidis-
ciplinary teams and has involved a wider range
of diverse child participants both nationally and
internationally.
Although researchers have studied children’s
reactions to disaster since the 1940s, the field has
expanded tremendously over the past decade.
Indeed, as our review demonstrated, nearly half
of all studies on children and disaster have been
published since 2010. This work has focused on
natural disasters, technological accidents, and
violent incidents, although a relatively small
number of large-scale events has driven much of
the research in this subfield. While mental health
research continues to predominate, research from
the social sciences has increasingly focused on
children’s vulnerability, voices, and human rights
before, during, and after disaster. This has led to
the introduction of new methodological approa-
ches including more participatory, ethnographic,
longitudinal, and mixed methods designs as well
as more diverse theoretical frames.
Given the tremendous growth of research on
children and disasters, especially over the past
decade, we assume and hope this momentum will
continue. Children make up somewhere between
20 percent to over 50 percent of the population in
countries around the world. Although often cast
as invisible, they are an important segment of any
given population worthy of sustained research
attention and specific policy- and
practice-oriented actions. Moreover, children,
who have inherited a changing climate and a
world marked by more weather extremes, are
increasingly involved in initiatives to reduce their
own risk as well as the myriad risks that they will
confront over the life course. Children often have
the time, energy, creativity, and capacity to
contribute to disaster risk reduction, and their
involvement in these efforts should be encour-
aged and recognized by researchers and practi-
tioners alike.
Acknowledgements Erin Prapas, Elizabeth Ochoa,
Kellie Alexander, Sonja Lara, Hunter Stafford, and Mar-
iah Taylor—all students at Colorado State University—
provided extensive and able assistance with compiling
and summarizing the literature that was reviewed for this
13 Children and Disasters 257

chapter. We also wish to thank the editors of the Hand-
book for their careful and thorough review of our work at
various stages in the writing process.
References
Abramson, D. M., Park, Y. S., Stehling-Ariza, T., &
Redlener, I. (2010a). Children as bellwethers of
recovery: Dysfunctional systems and the effects of
parents, households, and neighborhoods on serious
emotional disturbance in children after Hurricane
Katrina. Disaster Medicine and Public Health Pre-
paredness, 4(1), S17–S27.
Abramson, D. M., Peek, L., Redlener, I., Beedasy, J.,
Aguilar, T., Sury, J., et al. (2013). Children’s health
after the oil spill: A four-state study. Findings from the
Gulf Coast Population Impact (GCPI) project. NCDP
Briefing Report 2013_1. New York: National Center
for Disaster Preparedness, Mailman School of Public
Health, Columbia University.
Abramson, D. M., Stehling-Ariza, T., Park, Y. S., Walsh,
L., & Culp, D. (2010b). Measuring individual disaster
recovery: A socioecological framework. Disaster
Medicine and Public Health Preparedness, 4(1),
S46–S54.
Anderson, W. (2005). Bringing children into focus on the
social science disaster research agenda. International
Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters, 23, 159–
175.
Anonymous. (1957). Social aspects of wartime evacuation
of American-cities and the child and his family in
disaster. American Journal of Nursing, 57(1), 91–92.
Biswas, A., Rahman, A., Mashreky, S., Rahman, F., &
Dalal, K. (2010). Unintentional injuries and parental
violence against children during flood: A study in rural
Bangladesh. Rural and Remote Health, 10(1), 1199.
Bloch, D. A., Silber, E., & Perry, S. E. (1956). Some
factors in the emotional reaction of children to disaster.
American Journal of Psychiatry, 113(5), 416–422.
Bronfenbrenner, U. (1986). Ecology of the family as a
context for human development: Research perspec-
tives. Developmental Psychology, 22(6), 723–742.
Borden, K. A., & Cutter, S. L. (2008). Spatial patterns of
natural hazard mortality in the United States. Interna-
tional Journal of Health Geographies, 7(64). doi:10.
1186/1476-072X-7-64.
Caffo, E., & Belaise, C. (2003). Psychological aspects of
traumatic injury in children and adolescents. Child and
Adolescent Psychiatric Clinics of North America, 12
(3), 493–535.
Catalano, R. F., Berglund, L., Ryan, J. A. M., Lonczak,
H. S., & Hawkins, J. D. (2004). Positive youth
development in the United States: Research findings
on evaluations of positive youth development pro-
grams. The ANNALS of the American Academy of
Political and Social Science, 591, 98–124.
Charil, A., Laplante, D. P., Vaillancourt, C., & King, S.
(2010). Prenatal stress and brain development. Brain
Research Reviews, 65, 56–79.
Chapman, D. W. (1957). The child and his family in
disaster: A study of the 1953 Vicksburg tornado.
Contemporary Psychology, 2(7), 192–194.
Chen, S. H., & Wu, Y. C. (2006). Changes of PTSD
symptoms and school reconstruction: A two-year
prospective study of children and adolescents after
the Taiwan 921 earthquake. Natural Hazards, 37(1–
2), 225–244.
Cox, R., Scannell, L., Heykoop, C., Tobin-Gurley, J., &
Peek, L. (2017). Understanding youth disaster recov-
ery: The vital role of people, places, and activities.
International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction.
doi:10.1016/j.ijdrr.2017.03.011.
Cryder, C. H., Kilmer, R. P., Tedeschi, R. G., & Calhoun,
L. G. (2006). An exploratory study of posttraumatic
growth in children following a natural disaster.
American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 76(1), 65–69.
Cumiskey, L., Hoang, T., Suzuki, S., Pettigrew, C., &
Herrgård, M. M. (2015). Youth participation at the
Third UN World Conference on disaster risk reduc-
tion. International Journal of Disaster Risk Science, 6
(2), 150–163.
Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
(2016). Youth preparedness catalog: Disaster pre-
paredness education programs and resources. U.S.
Department of Homeland Security. Revised Decem-
ber, 2016. https://www.fema.gov/media-library-data/
1480715641545-7dc27a024e1e1ffdfc4985f42dceb6e1/
Youth_Preparedness_Catalog_v11_REVISED_508.
pdf. Accessed March 9, 2017.
Fletcher, S., Cox, R. S., Scannell, L., Heykoop, C.,
Tobin-Gurley, J., & Peek, L. (2016). Youth creating
disaster recovery and resilience: A multi-site
arts-based youth engagement project. Children, Youth
and Environments, 26(1), 148–163.
Fothergill, A., & Peek, L. (2012). Permanent temporari-
ness: Displaced children in Louisiana. In L. Weber &
L. Peek (Eds.), Displaced: Life in the Katrina
diaspora (pp. 119–143). Austin, TX, USA: University
of Texas Press.
Fothergill, A., & Peek, L. (2015). Children of Katrina.
Austin, TX, USA: University of Texas Press.
Gibbs, L., Mutch, C., O’Connor, P., & MacDougall, C.
(2013). Research with, by, for and about children:
Lessons from disaster contexts. Global Studies of
Childhood, 3(2), 129–141.
Grant, M. J., & Booth, A. (2009). A typology of reviews:
An analysis of 14 review types and associated
methodologies. Health Information and Libraries
Journal, 26(2), 91–108.
Green, B. L., Korol, M., Grace, M. C., Vary, M. G.,
Leonard, A. C., Gleser, G. C., et al. (1991). Children
and disaster—Age, gender, and parental effects on
PTSD symptoms. Journal of the American Academy
of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 30(6),
945–951.
258 L. Peek et al.

Gaillard, J. C., & Pangilinan, M. L. C. J. D. (2010).
Participatory mapping for raising disaster risk aware-
ness among the youth. Journal of Contingencies and
Crisis Management, 18(3), 175–179.
Haynes, K., & Tanner, T. M. (2015). Empowering young
people and strengthening resilience: Youth-centered
participatory video as a tool for climate change
adaptation and disaster risk reduction. Children’s
Geographies, 13(3), 357–371.
Hayward, B. (2012). Children, citizenship and environ-
ment: Nurturing a democratic imagination in a
changing world. London: Routledge.
Healey, N. (2009). Lead toxicity, vulnerable subpopula-
tions and emergency preparedness. Radiation Protec-
tion Dosimetry, 134(3–4), 143–151.
Hu, Y., Wang, J., Li, X., Ren, D., & Zhu, J. (2011).
Geographical detector-based risk assessment of the
under-five mortality in the 2008 Wenchuan earth-
quake, China. PloS One, 6(6).
Johnson, V. A., Johnston, D. M., Ronan, K. R., & Peace,
R. (2014). Evaluating children’s learning of adaptive
response capacities from ShakeOut, an earthquake and
tsunami drill in two Washington State school districts.
Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Man-
agement, 11(3), 347–373.
Johnston, D., Tarrant, R., Tipler, K., Lambie, E., Craw-
ford, M., Johnson, V., et al. (2016). Towards
tsunami-safer schools in the Wellington region of
New Zealand: Evaluating drills and awareness pro-
grams. Australian Journal of Emergency Manage-
ment, 31(3).
Kanter, R. K. (2010). Child mortality after Hurricane
Katrina. Disaster Medicine and Public Health Pre-
paredness, 4(1), 62–65.
Kreps, G. A. (1984). Sociological inquiry and disaster
research. Annual Review of Sociology, 10, 309–330.
La Greca, A. M. (2006). School-based studies of children
following disaster. In F. Norris, S. Galea, M. J. Fried-
man, & P. J. Watson (Eds.), Methods for disaster
mental health research (pp. 141–157). New York,
NY, USA: Guilford Press.
La Greca, A. M., Lai, B. S., Joormann, J., Auslander, B.
B., & Short, M. A. (2013a). Children’s risk and
resilience following a natural disaster: Genetic vul-
nerability, posttraumatic stress, and depression. Jour-
nal of Affective Disorders, 151(3), 860–867.
La Greca, A. M., Lai, B. S., Llabre, M. M., Silverman, W.
K., Vernberg, E. M., & Prinstein, M. J. (2013b).
Children’s postdisaster trajectories of PTS symptoms:
Predicting chronic distress. Child & Youth Care
Forum, 42(4), 351–369.
La Greca, A. M., Silverman, W. K., Vernberg, E. M., &
Prinstein, M. J. (1996). Symptoms of posttraumatic
stress in children after Hurricane Andrew: A prospec-
tive study. Journal of Consulting and Clinical
Psychology, 4, 712–723.
Lai, B. S., Auslander, B. A., Fitzpatrick, S. L., &
Podkowirow, V. (2014a). Disasters and depressive
symptoms in children: A review. Child & Youth Care
Forum, 43(4), 489–504.
Lai, B. S., Esnard, A.-M., Lowe, S., & Peek, L. (2016).
Schools and disasters: Safety and mental health
assessment and interventions for children. Current
Psychiatry Reports, 18(12), 1–9.
Lai, B. S., La Greca, A. M., Auslander, B. A., & Short, M.
B. (2013). Children’s symptoms of posttraumatic
stress and depression after a natural disaster: Comor-
bidity and risk factors. Journal of Affective Disorders,
146(1), 71–78.
Lai, B. S., La Greca, A. M., & Llabre, M. M. (2014b).
Children’s sedentary activity after hurricane exposure.
Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice,
and Policy, 6(3), 280–289.
Laplante, D. P., Barr, R. G., et al. (2004). Stress during
pregnancy affects general intellectual and language
functioning in human toddlers. Pediatric Research, 56
(3), 400–410.
Laplante, D. P., Brunet, A., Schmitz, N., Ciampi, A., &
King, S. (2008). Project Ice Storm: Prenatal maternal
stress affects cognitive and linguistic functioning in
5½year old children. Journal of the American
Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 47(9),
1063–1072.
Lonigan, C. J., Shannon, M. P., Taylor, C. M., Finch, A.
J., & Sallee, F. R. (1994). Children exposed to
disaster: Risk-factors for the development of posttrau-
matic symptomatology. Journal of the American
Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 33(1),
94–105.
Lowe, S. R., Godoy, L., Rhodes, J. E., & Carter, A. S.
(2013). Predicting mothers’reports of children’s
mental health three years after Hurricane Katrina.
Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 34(1),
17–27.
Maclean, J. C., Popovici, I., & French, M. T. (2016). Are
natural disasters in early childhood associated with
mental health and substance use disorders as an adult?
Social Science and Medicine, 151, 78–91.
Martin, M. (2010). Child participation in disaster risk
reduction: The case of flood-affected children in
Bangladesh. Third World Quarterly, 31(8), 1357–
1375.
Masten, A. S. (2015). Ordinary magic: Resilience in
development. New York, NY, USA: Guilford
Publications.
Masten, A. S., & Narayan, A. J. (2012). Child develop-
ment in the context of disaster, war, and terrorism:
Pathways of risk and resilience. Annual Review of
Psychology, 63, 227–257.
Masten, A. S., & Obradovic, J. (2008). Disaster prepa-
ration and recovery: Lessons from research on human
development. Ecology and Society, 13, 9–25.
Masten, A. S., & Osofsky, J. (2010). Disasters and their
impact on child development: Introduction to the
special section. Child Development, 81, 1029–1039.
McFarlane, A. C. (1987). Posttraumatic phenomena in a
longitudinal study of children following a natural
disaster. Journal of the American Academy of Child
and Adolescent Psychiatry, 26(5), 764–769.
13 Children and Disasters 259

McLaughlin, K. A., Koenen, K., Hill, E. D., Petukhova,
M., Sampson, N. A., Zaslavsky, A. M., et al. (2013).
Trauma exposure and posttraumatic stress disorder in
a national sample of adolescents. Journal of the
American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychi-
atry, 52(8), 815–830.
Meyerson, D. A., Grant, K. E., Carter, J. S., & Kilmer, R.
P. (2011). Posttraumatic growth among children and
adolescents: A systematic review. Clinical Psychology
Review, 31(6), 949–964.
National Commission on Children and Disasters. (2010).
2010 report to the President and the U.S. Congress.
AHRQ Publication No. 10-M037. Rockville, MD,
USA: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
Noffsinger, M. A., Pfefferbaum, B., Pfefferbaum, R. L.,
Sherrieb, K., & Norris, F. H. (2012). The burden of
disaster: Part I. Challenges and opportunities within a
child’s social ecology. International Journal of Emer-
gency Mental Health, 14(1), 3–13.
Norris, F. H., Friedman, M. J., & Watson, P. J. (2002a).
60,000 disaster victims speak: Part II. Summary and
implications of the disaster mental health research.
Psychiatry, 65(3), 240–260.
Norris, F. H., Friedman, M. J., Watson, P. J., Byrne, C.
M., Diaz, E., & Kaniasty, K. (2002b). 60,000 disaster
victims speak: Part I. An empirical review of the
empirical literature, 1981-2001. Psychiatry, 65(3),
207–239.
Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for
Human Rights. (1989). Convention on the Rights of
the Child: Part 1, Article 1. http://www.ohchr.org/en/
professionalinterest/pages/crc.aspx. Accessed on
September 25, 2016.
Olshansky, R. B., Hopkins, L. D., & Johnson, L. A.
(2012). Disaster and recovery: Processes compressed
in time. Natural Hazards Review, 12(3), 172–178.
Paardekooper, B., de Jong, J. T. V. M., & Hermanns,
J. M. A. (1999). The psychological impact of war and
the refugee situation on South Sudanese children in
refugee camps in northern Uganda: An exploratory
study. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry
and Allied Disciplines, 40(4), 529–536.
Peek, L. (2008). Children and disasters: Understanding
vulnerability, developing capacities, and promoting
resilience. Children, Youth and Environments, 18(1),
1–29.
Peek, L. (2012a). Age. In D. S. K. Thomas, B. D. Phillips,
W. E. Lovekamp, & A. Fothergill (Eds.), Social
vulnerability to disasters (2nd ed., pp. 167–198). Boca
Raton, FL, USA: CRC Press.
Peek, L. (2012b). They call it ‘Katrina fatigue’: Displaced
families and discrimination in Colorado. In L. Weber
& L. Peek (Eds.), Displaced: Life in the Katrina
diaspora (pp. 31–46). Austin, TX, USA: University of
Texas Press.
Peek, L., & Fothergill, A. (2008). Displacement, gender,
and the challenges of parenting after Hurricane
Katrina. National Women’s Studies Association Jour-
nal, 20(3), 69–105.
Peek, L., & Richardson, K. (2010). In their own words:
Displaced children’s educational recovery needs after
Hurricane Katrina. Disaster Medicine and Public
Health Preparedness, 4(3), S63–S70.
Peek, L., & Stough, L. M. (2010). Children with
disabilities in the context of disaster: A social
vulnerability perspective. Child Development, 81(4),
1260–1270.
Peek, L., Tobin-Gurley, J., Cox, R., Scannell, L., Fletcher,
S., & Heykoop, C. (2016). Engaging youth in
post-disaster research: Lessons learned from a creative
methods approach. Gateways: International Journal
of Community Research and Engagement, 9(1), 89–
112.
Perry, H. S., & Perry, S. E. (1959). The schoolhouse
disasters: Family and community as determinants of
the child’s response to disaster. Washington, DC,
USA: National Research Council.
Perry, R. W., & Quarantelli, E. L. (Eds.). (2005). What is
a disaster? New answers to old questions. Philadel-
phia, PA, USA: Xlibris.
Pfefferbaum, R. L., Jacobs, A. K., Pfefferbaum, B. J.,
Noffsinger, M. A., Sherrieb, K., & Norris, F. H.
(2012a). The burden of disaster: Part II, Applying
interventions across the child’s social ecology. Inter-
national Journal of Emergency Mental Health, 14(3),
175–187.
Pfefferbaum, B., Noffsinger, M. A., & Wind, L. H.
(2012b). Issues in the assessment of children’s coping
in the context of mass trauma. Prehospital and
Disaster Medicine, 27(3), 272–279.
Pfefferbaum, B., & North, C. S. (2008). Research with
children exposed to disasters. International Journal of
Methods in Psychiatric Research, 17(S2), S49–S56.
Pfefferbaum, B., Weems, C. F., Scott, B. G., Nitiéma, P.,
Noffsinger, M. A., Pfefferbaum, R. A., Varma, V., &
Chakraburtty, A. (2013). Research methods in child
disaster studies: A review of studies generated by the
September 11, 2001, Terrorist Attacks; the 2004
Indian Ocean Tsunami; and Hurricane Katrina. Child
& Youth Care Forum, 42(4), 285–337.
Prensky, M. (2001). Digital natives, digital immigrants.
On the Horizon, 9(5), 1–6.
Pynoos, R. S., Goenjian, A., Tashjian, M., Karakashian,
M., Manjikian, R., Manoukian, G., et al. (1993).
Posttraumatic stress reactions in children after the
1988 Armenian earthquake. British Journal of Psy-
chiatry, 163, 239–247.
Reich, J. A., & Wadsworth, M. (2008). Out of the
floodwaters, but not yet on dry ground: Experiences of
displacement and adjustment in adolescents and their
parents following Hurricane Katrina. Children, Youth
and Environments, 18, 354–370.
Roberts, Y. H., Huang, C. Y., Crusto, C. A., & Kaufman,
J. S. (2014). Health, emergency department use, and
early identification of young children exposed to
trauma. The Journal of Emergency Medicine, 46(5),
719–724.
260 L. Peek et al.

Robinson, S. P., & Brown, C. (2007). The children
Hurricane Katrina left behind: Schooling context,
professional preparation, and community politics.
New York, NY, USA: Peter Lang Publishing.
Rodríguez,H., Quarantelli,E. L., & Dynes, R. (Eds.). (2006).
Handbook of disaster research. New York: Springer.
Ronan, K. R., Alisic, E., Towers, B., Johnson, V. A., &
Johnston, D. M. (2015). Disaster preparedness for
children and families: A critical review. Current
Psychiatry Reports, 17(7), 1–9.
Ronan, K. R., Crellin, K., & Johnston, D. M. (2012).
Community readiness for a new tsunami warning
system: Quasi-experimental and benchmarking evalu-
ation of a school education component. Natural
Hazards, 61(3), 1411–1425.
Roser, M. (2016). Natural catastrophes. OurWorldInData.
org. Retrieved from: https://ourworldindata.org/
natural-catastrophes/. Accessed on March 11, 2017.
Scannell, L., Cox, R. S., Fletcher, S., & Heykoop, C.
(2016). “That was the last time I saw my house”: The
importance of place attachment among children and
youth. American Journal of Community Psychology,
58, 158–173.
Schlegelmilch, J., & Serino, R. (2017). Think of the
children when disasters strike. The Hill.http://thehill.
com/blogs/pundits-blog/uncategorized/325470-think-of-
the-children-when-disasters-strike. Accessed on March
26, 2017.
Shirm, S., Liggin, R., Dick, R., & Graham, J. (2007).
Prehospital preparedness for pediatric mass-casualty
events. Pediatrics, 120(4), 756–761.
Shonkoff, J. P., Garner, A. S., Siegel, B. S., Dobbins, M.
I., Earls, M. F., McGuinn, L., et. al. (2012). The
lifelong effects of early childhood adversity and toxic
stress. Pediatrics, 129(1), 232–246.
Silber, E., Perry, S. E., & Bloch, D. A. (1958). Patterns of
parent-child interaction in a disaster. Psychiatry, 21
(2), 159–167.
Singh, N., Tuttle, M., & Bhaduri, B. (2015). Enhancing
disaster management: Development of a spatial
database of day care centers in the USA. ISPRS
International Journal of Geo-Information, 4(3), 1290–
1300.
Sirin, S. R., & Rogers-Sirin, L. (2015). The educational
and mental health needs of Syrian refugee children.
Young Children in Refugee Families. Washington,
DC, USA: Migration Policy Institute.
Steinberg, A. M., Brymer, M. J., Steinberg, J. R., &
Pfefferbaum, B. (2006). Conducting research on
children and adolescents after disaster. In F. Norris,
S. Galea, M. J. Friedman, & P. J. Watson (Eds.),
Methods for disaster mental health research (pp. 243–
253). New York, NY, USA: Guilford Press.
Stuber, J., Galea, S., Vandivere, S., Moore, K., Pfeffer-
baum, B., & Fairbrother, G. (2005). Behavior prob-
lems in New York City’s children after the September
11, 2001, terrorist attacks. American Journal of
Orthopsychiatry, 75(2), 190–200.
Tang, T., Yen, C., Cheng, C., Yang, P., Chen, C., Yang,
R., et al. (2010). Suicide risk and its correlate in
adolescents who experienced typhoon-induced mud-
slides: A structural equation model. Depression and
Anxiety, 27(12), 1143–1148.
Tanner, T. (2010). Shifting the narrative: Child-led
responses to climate change and disasters in El
Salvador and the Philippines. Children and Society,
24, 339–351.
Taormina, D. P., Rozenblatt, S., Guey, L. T., Gluzman, S.
F., Carlson, G. A., Havenaar, J. M., et al. (2008). The
Chornobyl accident and cognitive functioning: A
follow-up study of infant evacuees at age 19 years.
Psychological Medicine, 38(4), 489–497.
Tees, M. T., Harville, E. W., Xiong, X., Buekens, P.,
Pridjian, G., & Elkind-Hirsch, K. (2010). Hurricane
Katrina-related maternal stress, maternal mental
health, and early infant temperament. Maternal Child
Health Journal, 14, 511–518.
Thabet, A. A., Ibraheem, A. N., Shivram, R., Winter, E.
A., & Vostanis, P. (2009). Parenting support and
PTSD in children of a war zone. International Journal
of Social Psychiatry, 55(3), 226–237.
Thomas, D. S. K., Phillips, B. D., Lovekamp, W. E., &
Fothergill, A. (Eds.). (2013). Social vulnerability to
disasters (2nd ed.). Boca Raton, FL, USA: CRC
Press.
Thomas, P. A., Brackbill, R., Thalji, L., DiGrande, L.,
Campolucci, S., Thorpe, L., et al. (2008). Respiratory
and other health effects reported in children exposed to
the World Trade Center disaster of 11 September
2001. Environmental Health Perspectives, 116(10),
1383–1390.
Tierney, K. (2014). The social roots of risk: Producing
disasters, promoting resilience. Stanford, CA, USA:
Stanford Business Books.
Tipler, K. S., Tarrant, R. A., Johnston, D. M., & Tuffin, K.
F. (2016). New Zealand ShakeOut exercise: Lessons
learned by schools. Disaster Prevention and Manage-
ment, 25(4), 550–563.
Tobin-Gurley, J., Cox, R., Peek, L., Pybus, K., Maslen-
itsyn, D., & Heykoop, C. (2016). Youth creating
disaster recovery and resilience in Canada and the
United States: Dimensions of the male youth experi-
ence. In E. Enarson & B. Pease (Eds.), Men,
masculinities, and disaster (pp. 152–161). Oxford-
shire, UK: Routledge.
Towers, B. (2015). Children’s knowledge of bushfire
emergency response. International Journal of Wild-
land Fire, 24, 179–189.
Towers, B., Haynes, K., Sewell, F., Bailie, H., & Cross, D.
(2014). Child-centered disaster risk reduction in Aus-
tralia: Progress, gaps, and opportunities. Australian
Journal of Emergency Management, 29, 31–38.
U.S. Department of Education. (2013). Guide for devel-
oping high quality school emergency operations
plans. Washington, DC, USA: U.S. Department of
Education.
U.S. Office of Education, Federal Security Agency.
(1945). Education under enemy occupation in Bel-
gium, China, Czechoslovakia, France, Greece, Lux-
embourg, Netherlands, Norway, Poland. Bulletin
13 Children and Disasters 261

No. 3. http://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED542753. Accessed on
October 1, 2016.
Veenema, T. G., & Schroeder-Bruce, K. (2002). The
aftermath of violence: Children, disaster, and post-
traumatic stress disorder. Journal of Pediatric Health
Care, 16(5), 235–244.
Weems, C. F., & Overstreet, S. (2008). Child and
adolescent mental health research in the context of
Hurricane Katrina: An ecological needs-based per-
spective and introduction to the special section.
Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology,
37(3), 487–494.
Weems, C. F., Taylor, L. K., Cannon, M. F., Marino, R.
C., Romano, D. M., Scott, B. G., et al. (2010). Post
traumatic stress, context, and the lingering effects of
the Hurricane Katrina disaster among ethnic minority
youth. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 38,
49–56.
White, R. (2011). Climate change, uncertain futures, and
the sociology of youth. Youth Studies Australia, 30(3),
13–19.
Wickrama, K. A. S., & Kaspar, V. (2007). Family context
of mental health risk in Tsunami-exposed adolescents:
Findings from a pilot study in Sri-Lanka. Social
Science and Medicine, 64, 713–723.
Wisner, B., Blaikie, P., Cannon, T., & Davis, I. (2004). At
risk: Natural hazards, people’s vulnerability, and
disasters (2nd ed.). New York, NY, USA: Routledge.
World Health Organization (WHO). (2017). Inheriting a
sustainable world? Atlas on children’s health and the
environment. Geneva, Switzerland: WHO.
Wright, M. O., Masten, A. S., & Narayan, A. J. (2013).
Resilience processes in development: Four waves of
research on positive adaptation in the context of
adversity. In S. Goldstein & R. B. Brooks (Eds.),
Handbook of resilience in children (pp. 15–37). New
York, NY, USA: Springer.
Xu, Z., Sheffield, P. E., Hu, W., Su, H., Yu, W., Qi, X.,
et al. (2012). Climate change and children’s health—A
call for research on what works to protect children.
International Journal of Environmental Research and
Public Health, 9(9), 3298–3316.
Yablokov, A. V. (2009). Nonmalignant diseases after the
Chernobyl catastrophe. Annals of the New York
Academy of Sciences, 1181, 58–160.
Young, M. (1954). The role of the extended family in a
disaster. Human Relations, 7(3), 383–391.
Zahran, S., Peek, L., & Brody, S. D. (2008). Youth
mortality by forces of nature. Children, Youth and
Environments, 18(1), 371–388.
Zeng, E. J., & Silverstein, L. B. (2011). China earthquake
relief: Participatory action work with children. School
Psychology International, 32(5), 498–511.
Zolkoski, S. M., & Bullock, L. M. (2012). Resilience in
children and youth: A review. Children and Youth
Services Review, 34(12), 2295–2303.
262 L. Peek et al.