Episode 15: Natural Disasters and Food Security with Dr. Lauren Clay

4:58PM Mar 21, 2022

Speakers:

Dr. Ian Anson

Jefferson Rivas

Sophia Possidente

Dr. Lauren Clay

Dr. Anson, Jefferson, Sophia

Keywords:

disasters

hurricane

people

umbc

food insecurity

pandemic

food

research

students

understand

north carolina

event

flooded

researchers

home

monitoring

called

social science

florence

lots

Hello and welcome to Retrieving the Social Sciences, a production of the Center for Social Science Scholarship. I'm your host, Ian Anson, Associate Professor of Political Science here at UMBC. On today's show, as always, we'll be hearing from UMBC faculty, students, visiting speakers, and community partners about the social science research they've been performing in recent times. Qualitative, quantitative, applied, empirical, normative. On Retrieving the Social Sciences, we bring the best of UMBC social science community to you.

I like to think of myself as something of an optimist. Maybe it's the fact that I work at a great university with inquisitive students and supportive colleagues. You know, maybe it's the fact that after a long day of social science research, I know that I can unwind by spending some time playing with my cat. Maybe it's just my nature, whatever that means. You know, regardless of its origin, thinkers and social scientists from Voltaire to Martin Seligman, have questioned the determinants of optimistic thinking. And it turns out social scientists have discovered a strikingly obvious pattern in human psychology. We mostly like to think about things that feel good. And we usually don't like to think about things that make us feel bad. Go figure, right? Despite our pension for optimism, on today's episode, we're going from the bright side over to some darker territory. Specifically, today we're considering what we know about the social science of natural disaster response. While the tendency for optimism I just described means that we often don't like to think about the potential devastation caused by hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, and earthquakes. Some intrepid social scientists devote their entire careers to understanding what happens when nature turns against us. These scholars think deeply about negative events, and explore ways to improve outcomes even in the midst of chaos and destruction. Dr. Lauren Clay is one of those scholars. An associate professor and the department chair of the UMBC Department of Emergency Health Services, Dr. Clay's research focuses on the social science of disaster response. Her work has investigated a variety of disasters, including fires, oil spills, hurricanes, and the COVID-19 pandemic, and focuses on improving outcomes through more effective emergency response. While most of us are content to spend our days dreaming of sunny skies and calm waters, Dr. Clay investigates how to protect us from the after effects of those darker days. I'm really excited to bring you our conversation, which was recorded earlier this spring. Let's listen in.

Dr. Lauren Clay, we're so grateful to have you with us. And we're really excited to talk to you about today's topic. Topic of disasters and food and food security.

Thanks so much for having me.

So my first question is really, I think, motivated by the fact that as a political scientist, I don't always think about the topic of disasters front and center as a as a thing to study. And maybe that's just because I tend to be something of an optimist. I tend to be like most people, I don't want to think about things that are very dire. And, and and sort of depressing in many respects. So I want to know what got you interested in this subject of disasters in the first place?

Yes, so I am from South Louisiana, where disasters are just a part of life, right? We get hurricanes, tornadoes, flooding. And then as I got older, I've moved around a bit. And I've also lived in other places that had hazards. So I've lived in Vietnam and Bangladesh, both which have tropical cyclones, which are hurricanes. So just that sort of personal experience. They were in my life, for the most part. And then it's interesting. So as I, so I moved to the north, I was living in New York and Philadelphia, it became really interesting seeing how people who didn't have these hazards as part of their everyday life didn't quite understand. There was a disconnect. They didn't, uhm, they had a very different perspective, so I got really interested in, in what's happening. In fact, it was, I think, Hurricane Gustav in 2008. I had gone home to visit my family. I was living in Philadelphia at the time. So you know, I visit them a few times a year every year, between I'd say three and five times. And so just as usual, would go and then Hurricane Gustav turns out was coming right towards our area. So we ended up evacuating, and I sent an email to my supervisor saying, you know, I was evacuating taking my grandmother, we were, you know, getting out of the way of the hurricane. And I would be back in touch when I could, you know, you never really know. It was a couple of days, I got back, you know, my area was fine. And I flew home. When I got home, my supervisor was like, well, I don't understand why you didn't just come home or why you went in the first place. And I'm like, well, hurricane season lasts a long time, and it's every year. And like, there might often be a hurricane developing, and maybe it's coming your way, but they usually turn. And so am I just not going to see my family half the year? No, so she just didn't understand. And that was like a moment that really stood out for me.

Yeah, that's an incredible sort of trajectory, to think about your sort of experience moving across the world, actually, not just the United States and encountering these various disasters. And you really got me thinking about the fact that I mean, for so many regions of the country and the world, there are just so many unique challenges that are you know, climatic in nature that are based in, in the the weather patterns, essentially. And as a North Carolinian myself, as a native North Carolinian I'm well and familiar with hurricanes. But, you know, I recall moving to Indiana for graduate school, and really being introduced to the phenomenon of tornado alley, which was a really new and different and worrisome situation there. But it really does speak to the fact that, you know, across regions, across places, we don't always think about the, you know, lived experience of people in other areas that are, you know, planning for and dealing with disasters in different ways.

100%, you're on the mark there. And I think that's why. So that's how I got introduced into disaster science as a field, and was fortunate enough to be able to study disaster science and management for my PhD so that I am, you know, one of many researchers in the country and in the world that look across all of these events. We learn what's common about tornadoes and hurricanes and earthquakes. Because it's really hard to plan, right, and respond if you don't understand some of the commonalities and what you're going to need to do to be ready.

Wow, absolutely. And to that point, I think that anybody who takes a look at your CV or goes to your website, which by the way, will be in the show notes, will see that you've been incredibly productive over the past few years, publishing on a wide variety of these topics you've just mentioned. You know, topics related to disasters, recovery, resilience, preparedness. But today, of course, the topic of the episode, I want to talk a little bit more specifically about your work on food insecurity and disaster. And so of course, you've done some work recently on food insecurity in the wake of hurricanes. That obviously seems to make a little bit of sense to me, a little more sense, actually, now that we've heard a bit about your background. But you've also recently investigated food insecurity as a result of COVID-19. And so I'm really interested in sort of how you approach this subject. How is COVID affecting food insecurity? And is this phenomenon similar or dissimilar to other disasters that you may have studied in the past?

Yeah, so it is similar. More similar than dissimilar I would say. And so I'll just take you back to pre-COVID. Actually, I was in North Carolina quite a bit between 2018 and 2000, mid 2019, studying hurricane Florence and the impact that it had on coastal North Carolina. And in that study, it was really the first study in the US that, that the primary focus of the study was to understand disruption on the local food environment and food security for people in a community affected by a disaster. You know, in the literature, right, the research prior, food was always considered as like, oh important to have for preparedness kit, but it wasn't really a primary area of research focus. So in North Carolina, some of the things that we observed after Hurricane Florence were challenges related to transportation. If people's vehicles were flooded, roads were flooded to be able to get to a food source. A lot of emergency feeding happens through drive thru. If you don't have a car, how are you going to get food? People experience lots of competing priorities for both time and for money. So imagine, you know, your home is flooded. You're, you have a short amount of time. You know, it's warm. It's September in North Carolina, to get things out dried off before mold sets in, right. So you're not thinking, well, let me take a minute to go and find a meal. And then even if you do take the time to go and find food, there's a lot of financial burden that happens when you have a hurricane and flooding, any sort of disaster that affects your property. And so lots of competing priorities that affect, I think, the accessibility of food. And then there's a whole element about your actual sort of capability of, of providing meals for yourself. So if your kitchen's damaged, your home's damaged, maybe you're staying in a hotel or with a family member, right? Your kitchen facilities, your storage facilities, your preparation abilities are very different than in normal times. So we see a lot of impacts in the retail food environment because of that. You know, people are, well, there's disruptions to supply, right? So if roads are closed, that may take extra time to get food into the area. Maybe crops have been flooded out. So there could actually be disruptions in the supply chain. But we also see this change in demand. So I actually interviewed a dairy manager at a Piggly Wiggly in North Carolina, and he said, I'm really struggling. You know, we're seeing clients that we've never seen before coming in and buying quantities that we don't usually carry. He said, You know, I had a woman in here earlier today, she wanted a two gallon half and half. Like we're Piggly Wiggly, we carry a pint, like, so I think, you know, trying to manage the changes in demand. People also might be shopping for two families instead of one, right? So there's just all of these changes that cause ripples in the system. We also see a lot of difficulty with a lack of appropriate foods. So, you know, if you don't have a kitchen, you go to the store, you can't really use raw ingredients, right? You need something that's prepared. So that was sort of what we saw in hurricane Florence.

Wow. So this this anecdote you've got about Piggly Wiggly which, by the way, I love because it's giving me flashbacks of my childhood in North Carolina. So this two gallon thing of half and half, right? So is this somebody who's who's buying this for commercial purposes, like to operate this in a restaurant? Or is this just because maybe their entire extended family is hunkering down with them in their, you know, small home?

Yeah, family, friends, right. So people are buying for more people than usual. And so to buy, like five half and halfs, it's not as cost effective or efficient. So then fast forward to COVID-19. Right. So we've all experienced it, everyone listening, you and I both. And we saw a lot of the same impacts on the food system, right. So farmers faced challenges with the pandemic spreading amongst their farm workers. So they were, you know, producing slower. Also in the processing piece of it, people, you know, cold environments. Maybe the disease was spreading differently in enclosed spaces, right, they couldn't just work outside if they needed their equipment. And so those sort of delays in the supply chain resulted in grocery shelves that really mirrored what you see leading up to a hurricane, right, where lots of the foods that are most useful, are off the shelves, right. And, you know, I remember the grocery store shelves becoming emptier and emptier as we as we started to learn more and more about COVID spreading, and that that lasted a long time because of those delays. And it causes a lot of stress and anxiety for consumers, right. So that's very similar to what happens in a hurricane. We saw in addition to those supply side changes, we also saw demand side changes. So purchasing behavior amid uncertainty is very different. So we were being told early in the pandemic, that, you know, that if you're symptomatic, you would stay home for two weeks. Getting two weeks of food sounds very similar to how you prepare for any sort of natural hazard event, right. It also affects the types of things that you buy. I know when I went to the store I was looking for, like things that were very shelf stable, that would last a long time. That wouldn't necessarily take up all my you know, my room and my refrigerator and freezer. Not so dissimilar for planning for a power outage, maybe related to a hurricane or other event. And then we also see, we haven't talked about the food assistance landscape. But there's also a strain on the food assistance landscape after a disaster, just like we saw during the pandemic. So food banks were having a hard time keeping up, we had to, you know, when schools closed for the pandemic, meals that students used to have at school, breakfast and lunch, now were being had at home. And so how to shift that to provide meals at home. You know, schools close in flooding all the time. And what are we doing to address that gap is a big question for me. We also see supply chain workers, the same safety issues that we see during you know, hurricanes. People maybe can't get to work, their fields are flooded. We had the same issue during the pandemic. I mean, the risks were different, going and working in a grocery store is riskier than being able to work from home. But that also mirrors what we see. I will also just say that we saw just as much sort of community adaptation during COVID that we see during hurricanes and other disasters. So, you know, schools mobilized to you know, get meals home for students. Similar in North Carolina, there was a school principal in a community that was badly flooded and she saw on social media that her students needed food and they were really struggling, and she actually opened a food pantry in the school for one year after the storm to support families. So we see lots of, more parallels than not.

Yeah, that's, those are some incredible insights. And to think that we kind of may have a playbook is what you're saying, I guess, that comes from our emergency response to something like a pandemic event. That's maybe something that the public doesn't really appreciate as much as maybe researchers and you know, kind of how you've been telling us about these, these similarities. And I sort of wonder a little bit about the policy approaches to helping to ensure maybe that the playbook that we might have to effectively respond to disasters gets used in a situation like COVID. Are there specific policy approaches that governments can use to push back against food insecurity? I mean, obviously, we've heard from you some great anecdotes about people like school principal doing this incredibly magnanimous thing and setting up this this food pantry. Are there policy approaches, I guess, is, is my question at this point. And is this a story that comes to us from FEMA? Is this a federal level kind of response that we might expect? Or are there state and local governmental interventions that are also effective here?

Yeah, so we certainly see a federal role through our, so through the Stafford Act, which is our federal legislation for managing disasters. There are a set of activities, actions that the federal government takes and is responsible for. And they do that with a broad set of partners from lots of different agencies. They're broken down into what, what are called emergency support functions and our national response plan. And there are three emergency support functions that are related to food, the food system, and those are led by USDA, and FEMA, and American Red Cross primarily. There are lots of other agencies involved, but those are the primary federal level actors. And American Red Cross is in there, while it's a a nonprofit organization, it does have a federal mandate to provide shelters and food during disasters. So those are our primary federal actors. Now, I'm a researcher. I look a lot at data. And the thing that really has stood out to me from, from studying sort of the hurricane context, and then seeing how things played out during the pandemic is that we have a data problem, and how we actually monitor food insecurity in the US. So food insecurity is, you know, is defined in very specific ways. And it is monitored nationally every year to see how we're doing. And that information is used by a lot of different programs. So in a non disaster context, we have something called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. This is for people who have a financial need for nutrition assistance. We also have a program called the Women, Infant, and Children's Program. And so this is for pregnant women and their newborn so that they get proper nutrition, and other programs. We use the food insecurity data, right, when we're making decisions about how many people have this need and how to allocate funds. And what I've come to understand is that currently, the USDA monitors food insecurity from an almost exclusively financial resources perspective. From studying disasters, I know that food insecurity in a disaster context is not just about financial resources. It's about non financial barriers. It's about physical inaccessibility, because your road might be closed. It's about the acceptability of food when you get there.. If there's shelves stocked with food that you need a kitchen to prepare, you're not going to be able to meet your food needs in the same way as if there were you know, healthful prepared foods available. And then there's also an availability piece to it, right? You might have a bucket of money, but when you get to the store, if there's nothing that you can use, or the store's closed because it's damaged, you're also having some insecurity. So I actually have a grant right now with funds from the USDA to look at how we measure food insecurity, so that we can do a more comprehensive job that's better for times of disruption and as disasters in the US -- you know, if anyone's been listening to the news lately, they are becoming more frequent and more severe for a variety of reasons. And so my position is that we really need to be monitoring. We need to have what we call surveillance, right, so we're monitoring every year, seeing how things are changing from this much more systems based, comprehensive place. Otherwise, we're gonna miss important barriers to food security for households.

You're really speaking my language over here talking about the sort of data science, right, behind how we address and assess and respond to some of these problems. I mean, that's an incredible insight, and one that I think, really speaks to the potential fruitfulness of the research that you're going to do with this grant. Because yeah, I mean, I think back to Florence, and some of my experience with hurricanes in North Carolina. And I mean, you look, you look at these places. And, you know, sometimes there are some really fancy schmancy subdivisions that have been built, unfortunately, in really bad floodplains. And you'll see when the rivers rise, it really doesn't matter. You know, if you are sitting on a house, that's $750,000, or whatever, you're trying to canoe to the store to get food, it's kind of a great leveler in some respects. And so, obviously, that's not to say that, you know, people in other places where maybe socioeconomic status is is lower are not similarly impacted, but we need to better understand, right, how and what we can do to to basically, like you're saying, get the supply and the demand to sort of match here, in systems where disasters have come in.

Yeah, I just want to jump in. So it's often discussed, and it was discussed during COVID. As you know, disasters are a great leveler. But that is not actually true. Interesting. Because of the systems and the structures, right, in our country, some people are more likely to live in vulnerable places than others. So thinking about sort of institutionally racist policies in our country, that, you know, the price of land is less expensive in places that are risky. So we actually structurally position certain populations in our country to be more at risk from disasters than others.

Yeah, so I think a little bit about the National Flood Insurance Program, right. And I know that there's been some discussion about how that policy has been created, and who's eligible and who's not eligible, and how some of these, you know, large scale institutional decisions, historically can lead to some of these really stratified outcomes. And so yeah, I think that there's some fascinating grounds to cover in trying to unpack exactly where and when and how people are being differentially impacted by these things. So yeah, this is all, I think, incredibly important research and stuff that, you know, we're gonna hopefully be able to see more and more of your work come out in the future that will help us understand these things. I want to ask you kind of a pointed question to that point. So obviously, you've talked a little bit about this data availability issue. What's really the biggest problem? What's the biggest challenge in your minds in terms of our future threats to food security in the United States? And how might we plan for it?

Well, this is 100%. related. So from where I sit for my research in disasters, and you know I have a public health background, so looking a lot at health outcomes in disaster settings. Inequity, I think, is the biggest problem that we face for food insecurity, for disasters, and for lots of other things. So, you know, as I just mentioned, it's disasters are not a great leveler, they actually magnify existing social problems. We saw it during COVID, right? Not everybody had the same risk of infection, because we, not everybody could work from home, right? It's people who work in the service industry and lower paid paying jobs that were exposed more. Lots of other examples that we saw during COVID. The same thing happens in all sorts of disasters. So I think the fact that racial and ethnic minorities, lower income populations, rural populations carry a disproportionate burden in disasters, points to that the fact that we need to be addressing inequity in our communities now, in every way possible. That's the way we're going to prevent, right, these disparities from growing over time.

Wow, that's really powerful as an insight, and something that has me a little worried when I think about some of the longitudinal trends, right in the the gaps, basically, between people's earnings and people's wealth. Obviously, in many respects, these these kinds of gaps are not diminishing in today's society. And I worry, right, as you're mentioning, so hopefully, we'll be able to reverse some of those trends, right.

Well, and it's even, you know, so going back to the structural issues and inequality. So there's has been some recent research that's come out that shows that it actually how we manage our disaster recovery process furthers racial disparities. So there was there are some researchers that have looked at FEMA individual assistance. And so that's funds that go to households for housing and other things after disasters. And they found that that the more FEMA individual assistance a county receive, the more white wealth increases and black wealth declines.

Wow. That seems like some policies with some pretty nasty unintended consequences. And I think it's incredibly important, it's going to be in the future to unpack exactly what's going on there, what the mechanism is that's causing that, because that's a really big problem, if that's what's happening. So wow, yeah, disasters are not always fun and games are they, so definitely, definitely a lot of important stuff to continue to explore in future research. And speaking of that, I just wanted to transition a little bit to think again more broadly about the process of your social science. And so you're talking a lot about data and trying to understand it. But you're also talking about being in some of these communities and getting on the ground and talking to people. What are some of the strategies, the empirical methodologies that you use to do some of this research? And how exactly are you coming to the conclusions that you do in your studies?

So in my research, so I use methods from different traditions, I'll say. So one of the, one of the methodologies that is used in disaster research is what we call quick response reconnaissance. It's the idea that you get on the ground after an event really quickly, so that you can observe things as they're still unfolding. And the method really holds that, that you you have to be on the ground, you have to observe the things that are unique about the specific event in a specific place to capture the gestalt of the event. And, and then from that, those initial days, sort of on the ground observing, talking with people ,that the most important research questions arise. And then you can move forward with establishing local partnerships and deciding how to, to best study. So that's something that I do when, you know, going into a new disaster event setting. After that, I do a mix of things. You know, I use methods that are appropriate to the research question, I have sort of different disciplinary tools that I use. So in my training, I was trained by an epidemiologist, a geographer, a sociologist, and a social behavioral scientist. Very interdisciplinary.

Sounds a little bit like the setup to a bad joke, you know, four disciplines walk into a bar or something. What they produce is really cool social science research at the end of the day, right.

It's true, and it worked out really well. So I use, so use geographic information systems to look at sort of spatial patterns and disasters. I use a lot of epidemiologic methods when looking at health outcomes. I do a lot of interviewing to hear about people's, you know, lived experience. And I look at quantitative data. So I do some surveys, I do a lot of surveys. But I also look at health outcomes data from various sources, and I look at administrative data. A lot of my work looks at community social institutions and how they support or sometimes don't support disaster recovery in communities. And it'sinteresting. So I actually prefer collecting qualitative data. But I prefer analyzing quantitative data. So I do a lot of mixed methods research, and I collaborate a lot with people, to sort of be able to spend my time how I wish.

Yeah, that sounds like sort of menu of methods that definitely lends itself to a lot of collaboration. And it's very cool to think about some of these different methods that you're using. Especially this idea of, as a researcher getting on the ground so quickly after an event. I mean, is that something where you have to kind of be monitoring events. You know, sort of focusing on where disasters are happening, and then I guess, booking flights and getting all those details together at a moment's notice. I mean, that seems like, you know, almost sort of Indiana Jones kind of scholarship out there, right.

Yeah, that's exactly what it's like. So I'll just tell you a little bit about what it looks like getting on the ground for after Hurricane Florence. I believe it was like a Thursday or a Friday. And, you know, I was watching the news, Hurricane Florence was coming. I had just been awarded a research fellowship to look at the post-disaster food environment. So I was definitely looking at it with this funding in mind. Do I want to put a team on the ground? So I was watching, talking with some collaborators that have you know, do this kind of work trying to think of what a good strategy would be, made some connections with disaster researchers in North Carolina to learn about the best information sources, so I was monitoring sort of like flood predictions, actual flooding, traffic maps, road closures. So lots of sort of local data sources and local input simultaneously while watching and thinking, am I gonna try and do this? I'm drafting protocols.

Wow.

And reaching out to various disaster researchers that that I've collaborated with and institutions all over the country to see if they have students, doctoral students, master students with interviewer training or that have done field work. And if they have the bandwidth to come into the field with me for a week. I think it was Sunday night, I lined up my team. I had three students, two masters and a doctoral from three different institutions. And I... Oh, I forgot a step. On Friday, I called my IRB, the Institutional Review Board that has to review and approve research before you can talk with people or do anything involving humans.

For any students listening. That's a very important step and one that should not be overlooked under any circumstances.

So important. So I called. And I said, so I'm looking at putting a team in the field. If I decide to, I'm going to write protocols all weekend. I would plan to submit them to you by Monday morning. Like I'm going to decide Sunday night, if I'm going to go. I'm going to submit by Monday morning, and I need a decision by Tuesday. So I have time to print before flying out Wednesday morning. And so they were like, okay, we'll do our best. You know, they never can really commit. But you know, I'd had some good experience with them in the past, so I was hopeful. So on Sunday night, again, you know, calling down, double checking with everyone who I've been talking to, decided, okay, I'm gonna do it. Sunday night, bought flights, three flights booked a hotel room far enough outside of the disaster affected area to not be a burden on the system. Did just in time training on Monday, submitted my IRB on Monday, got a packing list to my whole team on Monday. Tuesday, getting ready, I had to accumulate supplies, everything that I would need, because you never know what's going to be open when you get there. And we flew out Wednesday morning, and were in the field for six days, I think. And those days are like, you know, okay, well, we're up at 5am to make the two hour trek into the disaster area. Always leaving in the morning with a change of clothes, toothbrush and food for the entire team, pillows and blankets so that we could live in our van if we needed to. And, you know, monitoring the field team and everyone's comfort, you know. We went in with a, you know, if I can't walk in it in my wellie boots, we're not going. So you know, trying to monitor a very dynamic and changing situation the whole time that you're there. So it is a very, you know, I hesitate to use the word exciting because it is a devastating time for people, but from a research methodology perspective, from a training perspective for students, it is an exciting time in development. But it's, you know, a lot of adrenaline, little sleep, and ultimately very important for the research.

Wow. And here I am, you know, thinking that I'm having an adrenaline rush when I press submit on, you know, my survey experiment. That pales in comparison to the experiences that you and your students must have in carrying out this vital research. It is an incredible insight, and I really hope that that you're able to continue doing this in the future with some of these grants. And that, you know, you never obviously wish for a disaster to occur, but it's an incredible opportunity that you're able to come in so quickly, and in such a sort of rapid fire response way to actually learn something about how we might better improve our responses in the future. So incredible insights. And before I let you go, I just have one additional question for you. And that is, if you have any advice for some students out there who might be interested in getting more involved in the social sciences in the future, how might you advise them to go about their business?

I would say for students thinking about social sciences I have three suggestions. One, ask a lot of questions. Get good at asking questions. Ask to learn, ask about what you're observing in the world, ask about, you know, does it make sense what you're seeing? Second, I would say try to learn some analytical skills, some analytical tools. So some ideas like take stats classes, learn how to code, learn geographic information systems. Those things are going to become your tools for how you understand the world in whatever you decided to do. And then finally, I would say get involved in a research project or a community based project if you can. Build some skills for interacting with people, for collecting their stories. Again, whatever you decide to do it's always going to be important to understand, you know, the humans that are affected by what you're doing.

Dr. Lauren Clay, I want to thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me today. I really learned a lot about disasters, and about the response and also about social science. So again, thank you and I really look forward to seeing what more research you're going to bring to the table in the near future.

Thanks so much for having me.

Campus Connections (6x)

Now it's time for Campus Connection, a part of the podcast where we connect today's feature to other research happening on UMBC's campus. Today, I'm joined by our interns Jefferson and Sophia, who scoured the profiles of UMBC social scientists to come up with what I think is an extremely relevant connection. So Jefferson, tell us what you came up with.

Professor Anson it turns out that in addition to Dr. Clay, there's another scholar at UMBC who is thinking about disasters. In this episode's featured segment, we discuss the after effects of natural disasters and their disproportionate effect on low income communities. As it turns out, this topic is highly related to the field of disaster politics. Disaster politics goes well beyond the physical science of crises, examining the political, structural, and socioeconomic conditions that allow their effects to be amplified for certain populations.

Today's Campus Connection follows the disaster politics research of Dr. Brian Grodsky, a professor and the department chair of UMBC's political science department. Dr. Grodsky has worked as a first responder since the 90s, both as a volunteer firefighter and an emergency medical technician. Throughout his career, he has had first hand experience with the effects natural disasters can cause.

Dr. Grodsky's research on disaster politics sheds light on the uneven suffering of different demographics during times of crisis, something Dr. Clay also touched on in her interview. For example, Dr. Grodsky has studied the risk disparity seen during COVID-19 in terms of exposure to the virus. Lower income jobs were less likely to go virtual, but also less likely to provide health insurance to their employees. Additionally, the distribution of testing kits during the early stages of the pandemic made pre-existing power dynamics clearer than ever. Even now, some workers have much timelier access to health care and COVID resources than others.

A recurring theme in many episodes of Retrieving the Social Sciences has been the improvement only begins once awareness is spread. By teaching about disaster politics. Dr. Grodsky is leading us one step closer to change.

Alright. Thanks, Jefferson and Sophia, for highlighting several Dr. Grodsky's recent contributions to the field of disaster politics. While most of us tend not to think about disasters and crises on a day to day basis, I'm really glad that you UMBC researchers are taking it upon themselves to advance our knowledge of the social dimension of these worrying events. And thanks to you, our intrepid listeners, for braving the storms with us today. Until next time...

Keep questioning!