A Whole Community Approach to Emergency Management: Principles, Themes, and Pathways for Action

This document is a doctrinal piece on Whole Community, which is in part a strategy to respond to some of those challenges [as described in the report titled Crisis Response and Disaster Resilience 2030: Forging Strategic Action in an Age of Uncertainty].

David J. Kaufman

Director, Office of Policy and Program Analysis

U.S. Department of Homeland Security/FEMA

At FEMA and in the emergency management community, we often talk about the importance of engaging the whole community in how we prepare for, respond to, recover from and mitigate against disasters. Experience has taught us that we must do a better job of providing services for the entire community. This means planning for the actual makeup of a community and meeting their needs, regardless of demographics, such as age, economics, or accessibility requirements.

Over the last eighteen months, we engaged many of our partners, including tribal, state, territorial, local, and Federal representatives, the academic sector, the private sector, nonprofits, faith-based organizations, the disability community and the public in a national dialogue on a Whole Community approach to emergency management. The recently released document, A Whole Community Approach to Emergency Management: Principles, Themes, and Pathways for Action synthesizes what we heard through research, conferences, listening sessions, and direct feedback from our partners about how this Whole Community approach is successfully working around the country.

http://blog.fema.gov/2012/01/whole-community-approach-to-emergency.html

A Whole Community Approach to Emergency Management: Principles, Themes, and Pathways for Action

http://www.fema.gov/library/viewRecord.do?id=4941