Note to users. If you're seeing this message, it means that your browser cannot find this page's style/presentation instructions -- or possibly that you are using a browser that does not support current Web standards. Find out more about why this message is appearing, and what you can do to make your experience of our site the best it can be.

Science 13 January 2006:
Vol. 311. no. 5758, p. 155
DOI: 10.1126/science.311.5758.155a
Prev | Table of Contents | Next

Random Samples

Figure 1
Hurricane refugees trying to sleep in Arizona.

Researchers launched a massive telephone survey this week of Hurricane Katrina survivors, collecting data for what they hope will be an unprecedented close-up of the health and mental health of thousands of people still weathering the aftermath of the disaster.

Harvard Medical School and the National Institute of Mental Health, with $1 million from the National Institutes of Health, are working together on the project, called the Hurricane Katrina Advisory Group Initiative. At a 5 January press conference, the project's director, Harvard epidemiologist Ronald Kessler, said the survey was a "unique" initiative that will involve repeated telephone interviews with 2000 people--half from the New Orleans area and half from the hurricane's path in Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi. Names will be gathered from Red Cross and other aid lists as well as from random dialing of 250,000 numbers to find displaced people. "We've got to beat the bushes all around the country," said Kessler.

The baseline interview will be 2 hours long--"They want to talk to us," Kessler noted--and everyone will be contacted again for shorter follow-up interviews every 3 months over 2 years so researchers can "keep our fingers on the psychological pulse of this population."

Reports will be posted, starting in late February, on the project Web site (www.hurricanekatrina.med.harvard.edu). The survey is designed to give instant guidance to policymakers and will include answers to a question about the "three top things" that respondents think need to be done to improve matters.

Kessler said there are reports of depression, anxiety, excess drinking and smoking, and an increase in suicides among people uprooted by Hurricane Katrina. Psychologist Anthony Speier, director of disaster operations in Louisiana's Office of Mental Health, said the prolonged displacement is taking its toll: "From reports, the level of anxiety is increasing, not decreasing."

CREDIT: AP




To Advertise     Find Products

Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)