Disaster management based model for public health

The global setting  requires  new approaches to public health and to disaster management. Both are in need of improved theoretical underpinnings, which is the objective of this paper and argues that disaster management is public health and together they should play a greater role in planned societal response to disaster as well as in dialogue surrounding the creation of beneficial hazards. As a result of the new public health and the Utstein Template [UT] their foundations have been strengthened.  Herein, use of the generic formula from the UT is made. It is structured into three interacting factors representing hazard, risk and community management in order to explore HD resulting from an event [earthquake, wild fire, epidemic]. Public health combines elements of preparation and response to ever-present dangers to health, while disaster management is an aggregation of measures taken to prevent or reduce the likelihood of overall damage. Health disturbance [HD] resulting from an event is related to  population vulnerability, societal development  and governance. Pre-event preparedness and vulnerability are considered while distinctions are made between risk, hazard, vulnerability, mitigation. Management which reflects development and governance can be productive or not. HD is  mitigated when the basic functions of society are strong and economic growth high and it provides an implicit logic namely, when vulnerability is high and preparedness poor it is elevated and restricted when vulnerability  is minimised and society better prepared. The strength in our approach is that we deal with a unifying set of principles or at a minimum a closely related set of constructs for both public health and disaster management that permit us to organize our thinking about a problem space, analyze situations and design and evaluate interventions relevant to threatened societies. World shattering events will be used to illustrate.