Resources You Can Use: Youth Emergency Preparedness

Posted by Sarah Levin-Lederer on September 17th, 2019 Posted in: Blog, Public Health
Tags: community engagement, Emergency Preparedness (EPP), Health Literacy, public safety

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September is National Preparedness Month and there’s still time to save for an emergency, make and practice your plan, and get involved in community preparedness.

This year, Week Three of Preparedness Month (September 15-21) is focused on Youth Preparedness.  Kids can be great ambassadors for preparedness and involving them in the planning process can improve their resilience during and after an emergency.

FEMA, the Red Cross, the Department of Education and Ready.gov supports disaster planning for and with youth through the Youth Preparedness National Strategy.  This strategy encourages including and engaging youth in preparedness through planning and programming to build youth resiliency and preparedness leaders.

Here are some more resources designed to teach kids about preparedness:

• Ready Kids: From Ready.gov, Ready Kids provides preparedness information for kids, teens, families and educators including games and developmentally appropriate handouts.
• Owlie: From the National Weather service, Owlie is developmentally appropriate weather science and preparedness information with handouts, games and information for kids, teens, parents and teachers.
• Ready Wrigley: From the CDC, Ready Wrigley is preparedness information designed for kids from 2-11 with coloring books, activities, posters and a mobile app.

It’s also important to help kids learn about how to evaluate information online for accuracy and trustworthiness.  Teach kids critical thinking strategies for finding and using preparedness information with these resources:

• Trust It or Trash It? is a tool to help people think critically about the quality of health information by using questions to evaluate what they’re finding.
• Evaluating Internet Health Information: A Tutorial from NLM teaches people how to evaluate the information they find online and has a downloadable checklist to help people remember what they learned.

And always make sure you’re following trusted sources on social media to avoid scams and hoaxes before, during and after emergencies.  On twitter, follow @nnlmner, @fema, @femaregion1 (New England), @nws (and your local NWS weather station), local news outlets, and local and state government accounts.

To learn more about trusted, online emergency preparedness resources, view the recording of the webinar Are You Ready? Essential Disaster Health Information Resources for Keeping Your Loved Ones Safe taught on August 28, 2019.