Hurricane Katrina Summary

Hurricane Katrina was a catastrophic event that affected many people located in New Orleans, LA and the surrounding states in 2005. Merely hours before the evacuation was announced and enforced, many people, specifically the African American community could not leave and decided to stay. Throughout all the research from the study there are a number of recurring ideas that led the population to stay that included: financial factors, social factors and racial pre-existing conditions within this community. This qualitative study took a look at this population’s decision to stay and conducted focus groups to assess the factors that led them to stay.
SUMMARY
This research article is a qualitative study that attempted to understand the psychosocial and personal factors that were caused by the low evacuation response of individuals within the African Americans community in New Orleans. The purpose of this study was to decide what factors influenced some African Americans’ decisions not to evacuate before Hurricane Katrina (Elder et al., 2007). Although the research was intended for individuals who were in New Orleans, the American Red Cross in Columbia, SC, helped with the recruitment of individuals. The American Red …show more content…
The determinants that were used consisted for this study were the perceived susceptibility, severity, benefits and barriers that could all impact one’s decision not to evacuate. They were able to conduct 6 focus groups within 2 months of Hurricane Katrina hitting. Four focus groups had 8 participants each, and the remaining had either 10 and 11 participants totaling 53 participants in the study. Based on the data provided by the American Red Cross, a large portion of those seeking shelter in New Orleans were African American. This was not only a disproportionate amount of African Americans without homes, but added to the socioeconomic disparities within the