Public Health Addendum to UN City Disaster Resilience Scorecard

What is it?

The Public Health Addendum (PHA) to the UN City Disaster Resilience Scorecard (“the City Scorecard”) is a free[1] tool that strengthens and integrates coverage of the public health issues and consequences of disasters.  While the more obvious health factors such as hospital services capacities and structural and non-structural safety are covered in the Scorecard, other disaster-related public health issues have not been as well addressed. This Addendum, promulgated by UNDRR, with the support of World Health Organization (WHO) and partners, aims to remedy this. The PHA should be used in conjunction with the City Scorecard, and WHO’s Health Emergency and Disaster Risk Management (Health EDRM) Framework.

How does it work?

Like all ARISE Scorecards, the PHA is structured on the Sendai Framework’s Ten Essentials Of Disaster Risk Reduction.  These are summarized in Figure 1 below:

Figure 1: The Ten Essentials of Disaster Risk Reduction

Each section contains a set of questions. Questions are scored by the user, together with notes justifying each score, and a summary spreadsheet tool is available to accumulate scores and present them as a Euler diagram (also known as a radar chart).

Specifically, the PHA covers:

• Integration of public health and governance (Essential 1);
• Integration of public health and disaster scenarios (Essential 2);
• Integration of public health and finances (Essential 3);
• Integration of public health and land use/building codes (Essential 4);
• Management of ecosystem services that affect public health (Essential 5);
• Integration of public health and institutional capacity (Essential 6);
• Integration of public health and societal capacity (Essential 7);
• Integration of public health and infrastructure resilience (Essential 8);
• Integration of public health and disaster response (Essential 9);
• Integration of public health and recovery/building back better (Essential 10).

In total, there are 23 questions/indicators, each with a score of 0-5, where 5 is best practice.

Who should use the Public Health Addendum?

The PHA is intended to be used by disaster risk reduction and public health professionals, working together.

Who has used the Public Health Addendum?

Usage is not directly tracked.  However, the Addendum was implemented by the WHO in 13 locations across 8 countries: the USA, Australia, Brazil, Chile, Turkey, Philippines, Nepal and Romania and it has been translated into 15 languages, usually by request based on intended usage.

[1] The scorecard is freely available for any use whatsoever, including for-profit uses.