Community health resilience to disaster : a case study of flood in Eastern Terai Region, Nepal

Abstract

This community based, cross-sectional descriptive study uses mixed methods to investigate the community health resilience in Eastern Terai Region, Nepal, focusing on rural settlements. Questionnaires were used to collect data from household applying systematic random sampling, and institutional sampling using convenience sampling. The focus group discussion was also conducted among institutional samples. The hypothetical framework was based on literature review, then calibrated with public perception, and used to assess the disaster resilience level specific to the study area. The methods used included descriptive statistics of socio-demographic characteristics, principal component analysis to extract the factors, followed by factor-based score (composite score) calculation. Out of 397 household samples, 65.74% of the respondents were male and the heads of 78.59% of families were male. The mean family size was 6.12?3.10, (mean?SD). The majority (54.15%) of those families' heads worked as laborers (35.01%) or in agriculture (19.14%), and these were the main source of income for 58.94% of the families in those communities. Six factors were extracted by principal component analysis, and these were used to adjust the framework for community health resilience measurement. These factors were renamed as: communication, knowledge and planning civic engagement and resource management preparedness and emergency response revitalization psychological support, and social ties. The factor-based scores were calculated, and were plotted in a strategic framework for data presentation, which revealed that the social ties factor followed by communication, knowledge and planning scored the highest, while the psychological support factor scored the lowest. However, all six factors are equally important and need to be strengthened in order community to be resilient. To conclude, the promotion of these resilience components would help communities to adapt to floods and to cope with its impacts.