Part I: Understanding Disasters and Their Consequences -- Understanding Disasters: The Missing Role of Context -- Broadening Our Conception of Disasters and Their Consequences -- Part II: Why Do Disasters Happen? -- Vulnerabilities and Capacities that Shape the Consequences of Disasters -- A Conceptual Model: Understanding the Causes and Consequences of Disasters -- A Continuum of Vulnerabilities and Capabilities -- Case Study: Venezuela Floods -- Intermittent Stressors -- Case Study: New York City Subway Fire -- Intermittent Protectors -- Case Study: Peru Earthquake -- Part III: What Happens After Disasters? -- What Do We Know About Population Behavior? -- A Conceptual Model: Understanding Population Behavior After Disasters -- Stage One: Group Preservation -- Case Study: Cyclone Rona -- Stage Two: Population Preservation/ Altruism -- Case Study: Typhoid Outbreak Tajikistan -- Stage Three: Internalizing -- Case Study: Columbine High School Shootings -- Stage Four: Externalizing -- Case Study: The Oklahoma City Bombing -- Stage Five: Renormalization -- Case Study: South Africa Traffic Accidents -- The Big Picture: The World Trade Center Terrorist Attacks -- Part IV: Conclusions -- Modifying Our Models -- Conclusions and Implications for Public Health.

The World Trade Center attacks. A typhoid outbreak in Eastern Europe. Hurricane Katrina. While each is a unique disaster, devastating events such as these are united both by their causes, and by the wide-ranging, and long-lasting health consequences that characterize their aftermath.  Many of these consequences can be controlled or avoided. The Causes and Behavioral Consequences of Disasters brings a public health perspective to the fields of disaster preparedness and disaster response. Arguing that local context shapes the conditions for disasters, the authors study cases from the Cuzco, Peru, earthquake of 1950 to the Columbine school shooting to form the basis for a contextual model of disasters and population behavior following disasters. These models illustrate how the local context, careful pre-event planning, and coordinated post-event response strategies can minimize the initial damage and negative aftereffects of these events. This groundbreaking volume: Systematically reviews a half-century of disasters worldwide. Analyzes societal and environmental vulnerabilities and protective factors that can influence the course of disasters. Provides comprehensive models for causes of, and behavioral responses to, disasters, using in-depth examples from the U.S. and abroad. Applies both models to the World Trade Center attacks, with implications for the public health field.The Causes and Behavioral Consequences of Disasters will further professional discussion and understanding among a wide range of professionals and students across public health, mental health, education, health administration and policy, social work, and the social sciences.