On Resilience

Since early this spring, I’ve written probably a half dozen or so posts on resiliency. And tossed them all. Recently, though, I read an editorial in Biosecurity and Bioterrorism: Biodefense Strategy, Practice and Science that put my feelings into words, or at least helped to crystallize how I thought about resiliency.

I was first introduced to the idea of building a resilient society while researching HSPD 21: Public Health and Medical Preparedness. I posted specifically on this topic at the time, saying:

Truthfully, there is only so much the feds can do to promote community resilience outside of physically changing folks’ mindsets. Besides, I think the American people are pretty resilient – especially after the whole Hurricane Katrina debacle (ie. they know the feds aren’t going to help, and they need to just take care of themselves).

Then I didn’t hear anything about it until John Bowen posted a review of The Edge of Disaster, a book by Stephen Flynn, one of my favorite preparedness authors. On his recommendation, I picked it up and found that resiliency was quickly becoming a buzzword in preparedness, homeland security and emergency management. In fact, Congressman Thompson’s Homeland Security Committee even held a “Resiliency Month.” And now it’s everywhere.

Building resiliency into a community is not a bad thing. Striving for a resilient society is an admirable goal. In fact, it’s similar to free ice cream in that nobody can really be against free ice cream. We just worry about the why and the how behind it (the free ice cream and the push for resiliency).

In the case of resiliency, the why is easy. Because a resilient society will “bounce back” from a disasater more quickly and with fewer long term negative effects, it is something to aspire to. Like I said, nobody can argue against it.

The how, however, is a bit different.

How, exactly, does one build a resilient society? Or, better yet, how do we build a resilient America? You go to war with the America you’ve got apparently, and in this America, we spend next to nothing maintaining our physical or medical infrastructure (so says Flynn in his book), our entire business sector is built upon the idea of off-shoring and just-in-time delivery, and people are literally being kicked out of their houses. None of those things are big resiliency motivators.

As noted above, I guess I just don’t get this idea of resiliency as a stated goal of our preparedness efforts. It’s always seemed to me to be a way to shift the burden of preparation from the government to the private sector and lower levels of government (not that the feds should do all the work, it should be a shared responsibility). You know who’s got to come up with business continuity plans? Businesses, and there’s nothing that the federal government can do to make that happen. Putting on a tinfoil hat, can’t you imagine some sick media commentators blaming the Hurricane Katrina disaster on New Orleans just not being resilient enough–like it’s their fault. That’s my worry.
pre-requisites ,
In any case, enough with my negativity and onto the reason for this post.

Monica Schoch-Spana from Center for Biosecurity of UPMC had an editorial published in the June 2008 issue of Biosecurity. (It used to be free, but now seems not to be, so sorry for not having a link) She gives a description from Norris, et al., (2008) of community resilience and all of the things that need to happen to attain that goal. The groups that have essential roles include formal institutions (governments), community members, resident networks, trusted media outlets–all working in concert. The prerequisites for all of these groups to begin working together include diverse employment opportunities, robust health and human services, a strong physical plant and an equitable distribution of income and assets. Do either of these things sound like our society today?

So, to contrast that, Schoch-Spana gives the opposite of good resilience, which sounds an awful lot like my worries about what resilience will look like in our non-perfect country:

This multifaceted picture of community resilience stands in stark contrast to the idea of the indomitable human spirit in disaster. … It can obscure the hard, collective work necessary to mitigate potential communitywide harms. It can relieve the federal and local government of major responsibilities to help, fostering an ethos of every man and woman for themselves. And, at worst its worst, it can hold disaster victims responsible for their own tragedy, for not having demonstrated some ideal “innate” ability to bounce back.

Seriously, I thought that way before I read this article, and Dr. Schoch-Spana just put it into words.

So, where does that leave us? Resiliency is a goal for public health and medical preparedness, the President said so. The question about how to do it remains. And what exactly do we do in the meantime?

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