Answer 2 for NURS 8310 Week 11 Discussion 1: Applied Epidemiology Applied Epidemiology, Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill

 

During the Spring of 2010, a manmade disaster, an oil rig explosion which came to be known as the Deepwater Horizon oil spill (DWH), caused serious loss of human and marine life and shocked the Gulf Coast community. This disaster led to population health issues including impaired lung function, headaches and other pains, dizziness, and depression and other mental/behavioral health challenges for victims, victims’ families, and cleanup crews (Kirkland et al., 2017). Oil spill impacts are easily apparent in terms of respiratory health concerns, marine life problems, or local tourism or seafood economy downturns; however, such a disaster has had more subtle and hidden impacts on the mental health of nearby communities.

Fan et al. (2015) noted the collective knowledge added to the mental health care field after the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989, and how this learning experience may have contributed to awareness of psychological vulnerabilities of directly impacted victims (witnesses) of the DWH explosion. Authors described an assessment called Community Assessment for Public Health Emergency Response (CASPER) which demonstrated that depression and anxiety prevalence did decrease at one year post disaster compared with immediately following the disaster (Fan et al., 2015). They concluded that, though “persons who are most directly affected through direct exposure should be the primary focus for any public health intervention effort,” indirect victims (such as those involved in disaster mitigation or cleanup efforts) may constitute a larger prevalence and therefore require a differently focused effort for behavioral health support (Fan et al., 2015, p. 39).

By some measures, the area was prepared with somewhat of a framework for an environmental and occupational health disaster, in that it had an established referral process for occupational hazard injury by which victims could seek assessment, diagnosis, and treatment recommendations (Kirkland et al., 2017). It can be argued that further community preparation for future disasters occurred after the DWH disaster, since CME/CE credit modules were dispersed to primary care providers through online platforms after this event (Kirkland et al., 2017). A similar event-driven interest arose among members of the community, and community outreach with education about environmental exposures and hazards increased in the years after the DWH spill (Kirkland et al., 2017). Therefore, though perhaps community preparation was not thorough or complete, it is possible that primary care providers, community members, and other networked organizations now have a layer of experience with population health risks after manmade environmental disasters they would not have had otherwise. The authors soberly note the “general need to train both EOH [environmental and occupational health] specialists and PCPs in environmental medicine” (Kirkland et al., 2017, p. S77); I wholeheartedly agree, since disaster victims can hardly hope to obtain triage and treatment if their local healthcare providers do not know how to recognize exposure concerns and prescribe appropriate care across a variety of disaster-related diagnoses.
References
Fan, A. Z., Prescott, M. R., Zhao, G., Gotway, C. A., &Galea, S. (2015). Individual and community-level determinants of mental and physical health after the deepwater horizon oil spill: findings from the gulf States population survey. Journal of Behavioral Health Services & Research, 42(1), 23–41. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11414-014-9418-7

Kirkland, K., Sherman, M., Covert, H., Barlet, G., &Lichtveld, M. (2017). A Framework for Integrating Environmental and Occupational Health and Primary Care in a Postdisaster Context. Journal of Public Health Management & Practice, 23, S71-S77. https://doi.org/10.1097/PHH.0000000000000656