Nearly two years ago, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA<\/a>, offered a funding opportunity to Sea Grant programs throughout the country to help with emergency and disaster preparedness programs in coastal communities.<\/p>\n Connecticut Sea Grant<\/a>, based at UConn and part of a national network of 34 university-based and consortium programs that focus on solving coastal problems and developing new marine resources, decided to answer the call.<\/p>\n \u201cNancy Balcom [Sea Grant\u2019s former associate director] and I had been doing some work on preparedness, and we decided this would be a good one to pursue,\u201d explains Juliana Barrett, a Sea Grant extension educator emerita. \u201cWe decided that older residents of Connecticut would be our target audience, and then we picked three coastal communities, trying to span the coast, to be our pilot communities.\u201d<\/p>\n The goal of the grant-funded effort was to first understand the needs of aging residents and their caregivers and to assess the status of their preparedness for extreme weather emergencies.<\/p>\n That needs assessment would then, hopefully, aid in the creation of programming and resources aimed at helping older adults \u2013 who are often more vulnerable in emergency situations \u2013 be better educated and prepared in the event of a disaster situation.<\/p>\n \u201cThe needs assessment would really provide the foundation for what we went on to do,\u201d says Barrett, the principal investigator on the project.<\/p>\n To accomplish those goals, Sea Grant teamed up with additional UConn partners, including the Departments of Anthropology<\/a> and Communication<\/a> in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and UConn Extension<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cI think that’s one of the biggest strengths of this project, and one that made it the most enjoyable as well \u2013 understanding different perspectives,\u201d says Barrett. \u201cWe brought a really unique group together.\u201d<\/p>\n Listening and Learning<\/strong><\/p>\n For more than eight years, Eleanor Shoreman-Ouimet, an associate professor of environment and human interactions with UConn\u2019s Department of Anthropology and associate director of UConn\u2019s Institute of Environment and Energy (IoEE), has been examining extreme weather preparedness in Connecticut through her work with the multidisciplinary Designing Interdisciplinary Science And Strategies To Enhance Resilience, or DISASTER, research team<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cJuliana and I were well-acquainted,\u201d Shoreman-Ouimet explains, \u201cand early on, we started thinking about how we could take some of the questions we were looking at statewide and focus it specifically on the needs and challenges facing aging populations in distinct communities along the coast.\u201d<\/p>\n Shoreman-Ouimet says that, through other ongoing projects related to disaster preparedness, she and graduate student Abigail Beckham knew a significant cross section of state residents were underprepared when it came to resource allocation, communication efficacy, and connections between residents and policymakers.<\/p>\n With that in mind, they first approached this project by setting up focus groups with local stakeholders.<\/p>\n \u201cFolks who are already leaders in community care in that area,\u201d Shoreman-Ouimet explains. \u201cMaybe it\u2019s those who run senior centers or work in libraries, people who work in emergency management, or in health and human services, nutrition assistance. Talking to the people who are already doing the work on the ground and seeing firsthand what the biggest challenges were when it comes to engaging community members.\u201d<\/p>\n They held virtual focus groups with officials from each of the three communities before then engaging with older residents in a series of listening sessions held in-person in West Haven, Stamford, and New London.<\/p>\n \u201cWe had sets of broad, open-ended questions about what their memories were of events throughout their lifetime that have kind of stuck with them in terms of experiences with severe weather, their resources, their awareness of municipal assistance programs, how they receive their communication, how they prefer to receive it,\u201d Shoreman-Ouimet says.<\/p>\n What they found was that, among the older adults in the listening sessions, many were frustrated with the towns and felt as though they weren\u2019t getting the information from local officials that they wanted. They expressed uncertainty at what to do in specific circumstances \u2013 a flood versus a snowstorm versus a heat wave, for example.<\/p>\n They had a lack of trust in and use of technology, concerns about the reliability of news sources, and felt isolated from friends and family. They worried about their safety, their vulnerability to violence and theft during emergencies, and they worried about their pets and how they\u2019d get their medications.<\/p>\n They also largely lacked basic preparedness supplies, and issues were often exacerbated by accessibility issues, with many having health or physical mobility limitations and many also living alone.<\/p>\n \u201cI think one of the really interesting things was the number of people who expected to be called if there was a situation,\u201d says Beckham. \u201cIf there’s any kind of problem, they expect that someone is going to know to show up or will come check on them, and that is directly opposite of what many of the emergency management directors said \u2013 they think people know that they\u2019re supposed to call them if they need help. I think that was a really important insight and glaring issue that needs to be addressed.\u201d<\/p>\n Same Story, Different Ways<\/strong><\/p>\n In addition to the local sessions, the research team on the project also used survey techniques to learn even more about how older populations in Connecticut view their disaster preparedness.<\/p>\n Kenneth Lachlan \u2013 the head of the Department of Communication in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and an expert in crisis communications \u2013 led the survey effort.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of what came out of these initial listening sessions that we conducted with these older audiences went into the survey to see if we could make more general statements about what’s happening with older adults in Connecticut, based on some of that feedback and based on some things that we know from prior research in the area,\u201d says Lachlan.<\/p>\n Lachlan\u2019s survey reached 500 older adults across the state and looked to explore some of the same themes of resilience, risk perception, trust in first responders, and informational needs.<\/p>\n The dominant concerns that came out of the survey, Lachlan noted, were about flooding, power outages, evacuation logistics, event timing, and access to supplies and shelter.<\/p>\n \u201cOne thing that did stand out that really matched the listening sessions was the specific vulnerabilities that people fear,\u201d Lachlan says. \u201cFloods, natural disasters, fires, and infrastructure failures seem pretty consistent both in the survey data and in listening sessions and the focus groups.\u201d<\/p>\n The survey found that while older audiences felt as though they would need more information in the event of a disaster, they had less of an idea of where to go, what to do, or who to contact, and expressed a greater perceived need for instructions or information.<\/p>\n \u201cThe specificity of what came out in the qualitative analysis in the survey tightly aligned with what we saw in the focus groups and listing sessions,\u201d Lachlan says. \u201cThat was one thing that really struck me, the consistency across the methods that we used and what the specific vulnerabilities were that people were identifying. You don’t normally get that close of a match when you’re doing things that are so methodologically disparate, but we were getting the same story told two different ways.\u201d<\/p>\n And that consistent and detailed information expressing fears, confusion, communication challenges, needs, and vulnerabilities was exactly what the entire team needed to take the next step in the project.<\/p>\n \u201cThe stakeholders helped inform us in terms of sort of where to go, who to look for, what to start thinking about big picture, because they were really the experts,\u201d says Shoreman-Ouimet. \u201cAnd by taking the listening session information with the survey session, it then allowed us to build out these tools to assist the stakeholders.\u201d<\/p>\n Accessible Resources<\/strong><\/p>\n Perhaps unsurprisingly, the multidisciplinary team took a multimodal approach to the resources that they\u2019ve been assembling since completing the project\u2019s needs assessment phase.<\/p>\n \u201cThe first step was putting together brochures, printed brochures and online brochures that were also made available in Spanish, which was another need that we heard, having things in multiple languages,\u201d says Barrett.<\/p>\n Those brochures were produced with town-specific information for each of the three communities \u2013 numbers to call, important locations for heating and cooling locations, and how to sign up for emergency alerts.<\/p>\n \u201cWe tried to put all that together in a format where somebody could put it in a drawer and pull it out when they needed it,\u201d Barrett says.<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/preparedness.jpg\")
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