| Public health and healthcare systems are vital to community continuity throughout all phases of the disaster cycle. Increasingly, public health institutions are undertaking assessments of the various risks that impact health systems. These risk assessments draw on hazards and vulnerability research, yet little has been published on coupling health systems, hazards, and social vulnerability. This research presents the public health risk assessment for the State of Idaho, which was initiated in 2013 and completed in 2015. Through the inclusion of stakeholder input and feedback, we developed an objective, science-informed, and data-driven methodology that advanced the state of risk assessments. Such advancements include comprehensively identifying comparative hazard impacts to Idaho's public health and healthcare systems, holistically analyzing sub-county social vulnerability through the use of the Spatially Explicit Resilience-Vulnerability model, assessing jurisdictional and local mitigation capabilities, and calculating the residual risk of health systems to hazard impacts. We found spatially variable social and health system vulnerability across the state, in addition to variable mitigation capabilities and residual risk of the health districts. The results of this risk assessment help local, regional, and state health institutions in more effectively targeting and allocating resources to high risk areas and at-needs populations, and provides a foundation for future risk and mitigation assessments not only in Idaho, but across the nation. |
