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This document introduces a special issue of the International Journal of Disaster Risk Science that focuses on promoting the engagement of older adults in disaster settings. It acknowledges the challenges posed by increasing extreme events and an aging population, as well as the disproportionate impact of disasters on older adults. The special issue includes articles that explore older adults' contributions to the entire disaster cycle, including insights from various disasters such as COVID-19. It also features research from Canada, which can be a valuable reference for international efforts. The document concludes by highlighting the methodological advancements in engaging older adults in disaster-related efforts. The authors express gratitude to the organizations that funded the research. [Extracted from the article]

College students are a unique population occupying a distinct life-course and transition period between adolescence and adulthood. Although not monolithic in experiences, knowledge, and demographics, this diverse population is particularly susceptible to immediate, short-term, mid-term, and long-term disaster impacts. Recently, disaster research focusing on college students has rightly focused on the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Although the pandemic was a public health disaster interrupting social, developmental, and educational processes for students on a global scale, the climate crisis and related environmental disasters continuously threaten college students' individual development, health, and well-being. Thus, it is critical to understand current knowledge focusing on environmental disasters and college students in order to determine future research needs. This article used the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) approach to examine research on college students and disasters over the past ten years (2014–2023). We identified 67 articles, which we analyzed through a mixed methods approach, including descriptive statistics and thematic analysis. Results indicate that disaster impacts on college students are an understudied topic in the social sciences, especially in an era of more-frequent and -intense environmental hazards. Our findings demonstrate a need to engage college students in disaster research worldwide so that trade schools, colleges, and universities can collaborate with policymakers to build this unique and disproportionately impacted population's capacity to mitigate against, respond to, and recover from environmental hazards in an ever-changing climate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This systematic review aimed to assess the current knowledge of human–animal interactions (HAIs) in disaster settings and identify areas for future research. A Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses search was conducted on three multidisciplinary databases, identifying English-language journal articles published between January 2000 and February 2022 that explored the benefits of and challenges associated with HAI in disasters and emergencies. The review analyzed 94 articles using both quantitative and qualitative methods. The review found a paucity of universal terminology to describe the bidirectional relationship between humans and animals during disasters and a failure to include all animal types in every stage of disaster and emergency management. Additionally, research predominantly focused on the health and well-being benefits of HAI for humans rather than animals. Efforts to promote social and environmental justice for humans and their co-inhabitants should support the welfare of both humans and animals in disaster settings. Four recommendations were developed based on these findings to increase the inclusion of HAI in research, policy, and practice. Limitations of the review included the exclusion of pre-2000 articles and all grey literature, limited research examining different combinations of animal and disaster types, and limited research outside of North America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The upward tendencies of global climate change, disasters, and other diverse crises have been urgently calling for green social work (GSW) interventions which engage a holistic approach to explore diverse societal dimensions' compounded influences on inhabitants' individual and collective health and well-being in disaster settings. Though globally gaining more attention, GSW has been slow to develop in the Canadian social work curriculum and professional training. This deficit jeopardizes integrating environmental and climate justice and sustainability in social work research and practice in Canada. In response to this pedagogical inadequacy, this article employs a critical reflection approach to examine two authors' two-academic-year teaching–learning and supervision-training experiences of GSW-specific in-class and field education in a Master of Social Work program. The content analysis illustrates three essential components for GSW-specific teaching and training, namely adaptability, interdisciplinarity, and engageability. These components enhance the prospective social workers' micro-, mezzo-, and macro-level practices to better support individuals, families, and communities affected by extreme events and promote their health and well-being in disaster and non-disaster scenarios. These GSW-specific pedagogies shed light on the fact that integrading climate change, disasters, and diverse crises in pedagogical innovations should be encouraged beyond the social work profession. A multidisciplinary multi-stakeholder engagement approach would comprehensively investigate and evaluate the essential components and evidence-based strategies that better serve inhabitants and promote resilience and sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the need for cultural competence among healthcare service providers and other practitioners has long been recognized, there has been much less focus on this concept in the field of hazards and disaster research. To help fill this gap, this technical note offers a definitional framework for building cultural competence among hazards and disaster researchers and describes a training module that assists with developing such competency. Drawing on the extant literature, this article conceptualizes cultural competence in hazards and disaster research as an ongoing process that contributes to an understanding of the cultural attributes of affected individuals, households, communities, and societies that researchers are attempting to characterize. The four-step process presented here helps researchers move from cultural awareness to cultural knowledge to cultural sensitivity, and ultimately, to cultural competence. This ongoing practice requires reflexivity, respect, and humility. The time and effort involved in developing cultural competence can promote ethical research, improve the research experience for participants, enrich the quality of the data collected, and enhance the overall quality of knowledge creation and mobilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Methods matter. They influence what we know and who we come to know about in the context of hazards and disasters. Research methods are of profound importance to the scholarly advancement of the field and, accordingly, a growing number of publications focus on research methods and ethical practices associated with the study of extreme events. Still, notable gaps exist. The National Science Foundation-funded Social Science Extreme Events Research (SSEER) network was formed, in part, to respond to the need for more specific information about the status and expertise of the social science hazards and disaster research workforce. Drawing on data from 1,013 SSEER members located across five United Nations (UN) regions, this article reports on the demographic characteristics of SSEER researchers; provides a novel inventory of methods used by social science hazards and disaster researchers; and explores how methodological approaches vary by specific researcher attributes including discipline, professional status, researcher type based on level of involvement in the field, hazard/disaster type studied, and disaster phase studied. The results have implications for training, mentoring, and workforce development initiatives geared toward ensuring that a diverse next generation of social science researchers is prepared to study the root causes and social consequences of disasters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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