Guidance for Integrating Culturally Diverse Communities into Planning for and Responding to Emergencies: A Toolkit

Developed from the recommendations of the National Consensus Panel on Emergency Preparedness and Cultural Diversity, and with support from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Minority Health, this toolkit provides strategies to integrate issues related to race, ethnicity, culture, language, and trust into emergency preparedness, response, and recovery activities. 

This toolkit intends to achieve at least three goals:

• To highlight the importance of taking specific actions that recognize and integrate distinct, individual and especially community-focused race, ethnic, culture, and language priorities and perspectives into mainstream emergency preparedness, response and recovery actions;
• To “ground” efforts to reduce disparities with state-of-the-art leading practices and models, experience, expertise and research that can provide practical guidance for programs and services as well as communities; and
• To provide for local, state and federal officials information and a specific set of initiative areas that can assist in informing decisions around programs and policies that work to assure effective outreach and engagement of diverse communities in critical emergency strategies.