Travel time to health facilities in areas of outbreak potential: maps for guiding local preparedness and response

Most studies of mental health in humanitarian aid workers have found low levels of posttraumatic stress disorder, making it hard to disaggregate and look at differences between subgroups. This study sought to identify the risk and protective factors associated with resistant, resilient, and nonresilient trajectories of stress response over time that could be used to inform more targeted training and organizational support programs for aid workers. Aid workers from 19 qualifying humanitarian organizations who aged =18 years and were to deploy for 3 to 12 months completed questionnaires at 3 time points (pre, post, and follow-up). We identified 3 unique groups (nonresilient, resistant, and resilient) using latent class growth analysis and identified predictors of subgroup classification using multivariate logistic regression. Single individuals were less likely to be in the resilient group than in the resistant group compared to coupled individuals. Individuals with one prior deployment were three times more likely to be nonresilient than resistant compared to individuals with no previous deployments. There was no significant difference in resistant, resilient, and nonresilient classification for individuals with >2 deployments. Findings suggest a need for supplemental training and psychosocial support post the first deployment as well as resources focused on potential this should be cumulative rather than accumulative effects of stress and trauma exposure for more seasoned deployers.Download paper here

Recommended citation: Hulland, E.N., Wiens, K.E., Shirude, S. et al. Travel time to health facilities in areas of outbreak potential: maps for guiding local preparedness and response. BMC Med 17, 232 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12916-019-1459-6