Associations between community-level disaster exposure and individual-level changes in disability and risk of death for older Americans.

Disasters occur frequently in the United States (US) and their impact on acute morbidity, mortality and short-term increased health needs has been well described. However, barring mental health, little is known about the medium or longer-term health impacts of disasters. This study sought to determine if there is an association between community-level disaster exposure and individual-level changes in disability and/or the risk of death for older Americans. Using the US Federal Emergency Management Agency's database of disaster declarations, 602 disasters occurred between August 1998 and December 2010 and were characterized by their presence, intensity, duration and type. Repeated measurements of a disability score (based on activities of daily living) and dates of death were observed between January 2000 and November 2010 for 18,102 American individuals aged 50-89 years, who were participating in the national longitudinal Health and Retirement Study. Longitudinal (disability) and time-to-event (death) data were modelled simultaneously using a 'joint modelling' approach. There was no evidence of an association between community-level disaster exposure and individual-level changes in disability or the risk of death. Our results suggest that future research should focus on individual-level disaster exposures, moderate to severe disaster events, or higher-risk groups of individuals.

[1]  M. Webber,et al.  Lung function in rescue workers at the World Trade Center after 7 years. , 2010, New England Journal of Medicine.

[2]  Dimitris Rizopoulos,et al.  Joint Models for Longitudinal and Time-to-Event Data: With Applications in R , 2012 .

[3]  M. Lechevallier,et al.  Did a severe flood in the Midwest cause an increase in the incidence of gastrointestinal symptoms? , 2004, American journal of epidemiology.

[4]  M. Laplante,et al.  The classic measure of disability in activities of daily living is biased by age but an expanded IADL/ADL measure is not. , 2010, The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences.

[5]  S. Galea,et al.  The epidemiology of post-traumatic stress disorder after disasters. , 2005, Epidemiologic reviews.

[6]  R Henderson,et al.  Joint modelling of longitudinal measurements and event time data. , 2000, Biostatistics.

[7]  B. Pfefferbaum,et al.  Mental health response to community disasters: a systematic review. , 2013, JAMA.

[8]  D. Rubin,et al.  Statistical Analysis with Missing Data. , 1989 .

[9]  M. T. J. Buñuales,et al.  La clasificación internacional del funcionamiento de la discapacidad y de la salud (CIF) 2001 , 2002 .

[10]  I. Kawachi,et al.  Can Community Social Cohesion Prevent Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in the Aftermath of a Disaster? A Natural Experiment From the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami , 2016, American journal of epidemiology.

[11]  Joseph G Ibrahim,et al.  Joint modeling of survival and longitudinal non‐survival data: current methods and issues. Report of the DIA Bayesian joint modeling working group , 2015, Statistics in medicine.

[12]  S. Galea,et al.  Long-term posttraumatic stress symptoms among 3,271 civilian survivors of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. , 2011, American journal of epidemiology.

[13]  Sandro Galea,et al.  Perceived Service Need After Hurricane Sandy in a Representative Sample of Survivors: The Roles of Community-Level Damage and Individual-Level Stressors , 2016, Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness.

[14]  Keith R Abrams,et al.  Flexible parametric joint modelling of longitudinal and survival data , 2012, Statistics in medicine.

[15]  José Buz,et al.  Measurement of the severity of disability in community-dwelling adults and older adults: interval-level measures for accurate comparisons in large survey data sets , 2016, BMJ Open.

[16]  J. Rhodes,et al.  The contribution of pre- and postdisaster social support to short- and long-term mental health after Hurricanes Katrina: A longitudinal study of low-income survivors. , 2015, Social science & medicine.

[17]  W. Spector,et al.  Impact of differential item functioning on age and gender differences in functional disability. , 2002, The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences.

[18]  N. Sastry,et al.  The effect of Hurricane Katrina on the prevalence of health impairments and disability among adults in New Orleans: differences by age, race, and sex. , 2013, Social science & medicine.

[19]  R Core Team,et al.  R: A language and environment for statistical computing. , 2014 .

[20]  M. Wulfsohn,et al.  A joint model for survival and longitudinal data measured with error. , 1997, Biometrics.

[21]  R. Marioni,et al.  Social activity, cognitive decline and dementia risk: a 20-year prospective cohort study , 2015, BMC Public Health.

[22]  Debarati Guha-Sapir,et al.  Annual Disaster Statistical Review 2009The numbers and trends , 2010 .

[23]  Simon G Thompson,et al.  Joint modelling of longitudinal and time-to-event data with application to predicting abdominal aortic aneurysm growth and rupture , 2011, Biometrical journal. Biometrische Zeitschrift.

[24]  L. Hendrickson,et al.  Mortality of Kauai residents in the 12-month period following Hurricane Iniki. , 1996, American journal of epidemiology.

[25]  James P. Smith.  Racial and Ethnic Differences in Wealth in the Health and Retirement Study , 2004 .

[26]  Dimitris Rizopoulos,et al.  The R Package JMbayes for Fitting Joint Models for Longitudinal and Time-to-Event Data using MCMC , 2014, 1404.7625.

[27]  Amanda Sonnega,et al.  Cohort Profile: the Health and Retirement Study (HRS). , 2014, International journal of epidemiology.

[28]  R. Marioni,et al.  Cognitive lifestyle jointly predicts longitudinal cognitive decline and mortality risk , 2014, European Journal of Epidemiology.