title: Strategies to enhance resilience post-natural disaster: a qualitative study of experiences with Australian floods and fires.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Disasters have a significant impact on mental health that may be mitigated by promoting resilience. This study explores the lay perspective on public health interventions that have the potential to facilitate resilience of adults who experience a natural disaster.
  
  
  METHODS
  Semi-structured interviews were conducted 6 months post-disaster between June 2011 and January 2012 with 19 people who experienced the 2010/11 Victorian floods. Twenty lay witness statements from people who presented to the 2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission were also selected for analysis. Transcripts were analysed using an interpretive and comparative content analysis to develop an understanding of disaster resilience interventions in an ecological framework.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The participants identified resilience focused interventions such as information that help individuals manage emotions and make effective decisions and plans, or enable access to resources; face-to-face communication strategies such as public events that restore or create new social connections; rebuilding of community capacity through coordination of volunteers and donations and policies that manage disaster risk.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Disaster recovery interventions designed within an ecological model can promote a comprehensive integrated systems approach to support resilience in affected populations.
authors.affiliation: International Centre for Allied Health Evidence, University of South Australia, Adelaide 5000, Australia.
authors.forename: Gisela
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: van Kessel
authors.affiliation: Community Partnerships & Health Equity Research Jack Brockhoff Child Health & Wellbeing Program, The McCaughey Centre, University of Melbourne, Melbourne 3000, Australia.
authors.forename: Lisa
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Gibbs
authors.affiliation: Public Health & Southgate Institute for Health, Society and Equity, School of Medicine, Flinders University, Adelaide 5000, Australia Brockhoff Child Health & Wellbeing Program, The McCaughey Centre, University of Melbourne, Melbourne 3000, Australia.
authors.forename: Colin
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: MacDougall
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D005260:Female; D005390:Fires; D055868:Floods; D006801:Humans; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011634:Public Health; D055500:Resilience, Psychological; D014739:Victoria
keywords: fire; flood; interventions; natural disaster; qualitative research; resilience