What to know
The Puerto Rico Department of Health (PR DOH) has deployed a new environmental health screening tool, the Post Disaster Self-Assessment Form (PDSAF), to protect children after earthquakes.
Rapid Screening for Environmental Risks to Protect Children
The Puerto Rico Department of Health (PR DOH) rapidly deployed a new environmental health screening tool. This tool is the Post Disaster Self-Assessment Form (PDSAF) designed to protect children after earthquakes. The PDSAF helps early care and education (ECE) programs quickly assess environmental hazards, build trust, help communities, and protect children. The tool was created to help fill a gap in identifying environmental health hazards that existed when evaluating ECEs after disasters.
Multiple earthquakes affected Puerto Rico's southern region on December 28 and 29, 2019. This left most programs serving children in the area closed indefinitely. Local municipalities and ECE facilities asked PR DOH to use the PDSAF to evaluate their centers and help them reopen safely. The tool helped identify several ECE facilities that should not reopen until assessed by an engineer and repaired. Many of the facilities were found to have cracks in the walls and supporting structures. This included some items that may not have been assessed prior to the tool's availability. PR DOH was the first department to deploy this new tool to help with initial evaluations of ECE program locations post-disaster. This tool was given real-world application by ECE owners/operators and the PR DOH. Their use of the PDSAF indicated that frontline communities have successfully demonstrated the ability to:
- Understand environmental health hazards
- Rapidly write consensus-based plans for population protection measures
- Participate in an objective-based tabletop exercise and
- Perform these activities in a bi-lingual setting.