Citation

Haas EJ, Furek A, Casey M, Yoon KN, Moore SM. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2021; 18(15): e8049.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2021, MDPI: Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute)

DOI

10.3390/ijerph18158049

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

During emergencies, areas with higher social vulnerability experience an increased risk for negative health outcomes. However, research has not extrapolated this concept to understand how the workers who respond to these areas may be affected. Researchers from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) merged approximately 160,000 emergency response calls received from three fire departments during the COVID-19 pandemic with the CDC's publicly available Social Vulnerability Index (SVI) to examine the utility of SVI as a leading indicator of occupational health and safety risks. Multiple regressions, binomial logit models, and relative weights analyses were used to answer the research questions. Researchers found that higher social vulnerability on household composition, minority/language, and housing/transportation increase the risk of first responders' exposure to SARS-CoV-2. Higher socioeconomic, household, and minority vulnerability were significantly associated with response calls that required emergency treatment and transport in comparison to fire-related or other calls that are also managed by fire departments. These results have implications for more strategic emergency response planning during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as improving Total Worker Health(®) and future of work initiatives at the worker and workplace levels within the fire service industry.

Language: en

Keywords

risk management; emergency medical services; occupational stress; logit regression; firefighter; coronavirus; emergency management; relative weights; social vulnerability index; total worker health