Emergency Planning Archive

Increasingly, floods, fires, and extreme weather stemming from climate change are contributing to large-scale health and safety issues for people everywhere. There are steps you and your family can take to help protect your health.

Flooding due to major storms or heavy rains can harm lung health, both from toxic contaminants that end up in the air and from the growth of mold caused by dampness. Taking steps to prevent flooding when possible and moving quickly to reduce health risks if flooding occurs can help protect your family's health.

A research letter published online April 25, 2022, by JAMA Internal Medicine suggests that existing advance care directives often don't reflect people's actual wishes (based on values and beliefs) and care goals.

Fewer than half of people who experience cardiac arrest outside of a hospital receive CPR from someone nearby. Shorter, more accessible training and help from technology may encourage more people to learn and administer this lifesaving technique. Another potential barrier to performing CPR is not recognizing the symptoms of cardiac arrest. Common mistakes include pressing down on the stomach instead of the center of the chest, not compressing the chest deeply enough, or giving compressions that are either too fast or too slow.

If you wind up in an emergency department due to an illness or accident what should you know and what can you expect? It's frustrating to have to wait for care, and also frustrating to have to explain your situation multiple times to different people, but there are reasons why it all happens.

Climate change has made life-threatening heat waves increasingly common across the globe. Anyone with health issues will have a more difficult time in extreme heat, including older people and people with diabetes, heart disease, asthma, and other conditions. Be prepared by knowing how to identify and treat heat-related illness, and how to plan for hot days.