Principle Investigator Tim Slack (top left) and co-PIs Jaishree Beedasy (top right), Matthew Lee (bottom left), and Thomas Chandler (bottom right) will collect data from spill-affected households to identify which services and support will be most helpful to their recovery. (Photos provided by Tim Slack)
GoMRI recently awarded Dr. Tim Slack, a member of CRGC’s LSU team, a grant to continue impact assessments of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on families and their children. This research is a follow on from the National Center for Disaster Preparedness’ 2010 survey of households in highly-affected Louisiana areas to track the health and social impacts of the spill as well as the subsequent studies in 2014, which revealed that physical and mental distress resulting from the spill still persisted, with over 15% of respondents reporting no perceived recovery of their household or community.
Dr. Slack, who is the project’s Principal Investigator, along with co-PIs Matthew R. Lee (Louisiana State University Department of Sociology) and Jaishree Beedasy and Thomas Chandler (Columbia University’s National Center for Disaster Preparedness), will combine surveys, focus groups, and social media analyses to create a longitudinal dataset with time points in 2014, 2016, and 2018. This data will help document social consequences, such as risk behaviors and educational and economic opportunities, and physical and mental effects of disaster-related trauma on families affected by the spill. The study will also examine how these impacts are related to various dimensions of disaster vulnerability (a person or community’s risk of negative disaster impacts) and resilience (the ability to adapt and recover).
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