Two Decades Later, the Experience of Katrina Continues to Shape How the Nation Prepares for and Responds to Disasters
Katrina and the years since have also driven home an uncomfortable reality: “resilience” to disasters and other threats is not distributed evenly among communities, and this inequality is correlated with other long-standing disparities centered around wealth, education, and access to housing and health care. On these dimensions, the Gulf region lags behind the nation, exhibiting even higher levels of inequality. These disparities have real consequences. For example, the direct estimates of Katrina’s impacts understate the full damage, as research has shown that the indirect effects from disasters, including premature mortality, can be substantial.
Engaging Communities
Against this backdrop, it is clear that much of the work to be done for resilience has to occur at the community level, a task even more urgent as the federal government is rethinking its role in disaster response. Success will require transcending traditional silos at the local level and taking a comprehensive approach that looks across multiple, intersecting community “capitals.” The Gulf Research Program’s health and resilience work recognizes this reality, with local engagement playing a major role in our programming. Our work builds on insights gained from GRP investments, including a pair of consensus studies that address the new reality of “compounding disasters” and identify the essential components of a regional strategy for strengthening community health and resilience. Our Thriving Community grants have supported efforts to bridge the gap between the knowledge and practice of community resilience at the local level, while other grant cycles have addressed critical and often overlooked topics like mental health and the intersection of health and climate impacts.
Effective partnerships are essential to success. We are currently collaborating with the National Academy of Medicine’s Climate Communities Network, a nationwide endeavor to elevate community expertise, experience, and efforts to address the structural drivers of climate-related health inequities at the community level. We’re also working with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to support community-engaged research on the role that data on the social determinants of health could play in improving public health data systems and better addressing health disparities. Similarly, we are supporting the CDC Foundation to help prepare Gulf communities for health challenges posed by climate change and related disasters. The CDC Foundation is an independent nonprofit created by Congress to mobilize philanthropic and private-sector partnerships to help the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention save and improve lives.
Moving forward, we are building connections with local community foundations, who are on the front lines with their communities and have the local knowledge and connections necessary for real impact. The philanthropic community, along with local government, community organizations, and the research community are the pillars of our Adaptive Capacities for Transformation Initiative, which is bringing together key stakeholders in Houston, New Orleans, and Mobile, Alabama, to identify assets, priorities, and gaps in order to build collaborative agendas for building local resilience.
Looking Ahead
Disaster threats aren’t going away, and the years since Katrina have made that clear. The science is not yet at the point where we can definitively say that the experience of the last few years represents a “new normal” of extreme weather in the Gulf region—but it is possible that we are looking at a future of compounding and sequential disasters similar to the 2020 hurricane season, which was the most active Atlantic hurricane season ever experienced in the United States. In that season, a record 11 hurricanes made landfall; a record five named storms made landfall in the Gulf states; and 10 storms underwent rapid intensification, a process that requires extremely warm water (near or above 30°C/86°F). And in 2024, Hurricane Helen, according to some estimates, claimed 250 lives, the most in the U.S. from a storm since Katrina.
The tragedy of the storm provided painful lessons for the Gulf and the country as a whole. The path to recovery has been marked by missteps, but there have been many inspiring achievements along the way. Today, we have a much better understanding about what is required to keep our communities safe, healthy, and thriving in the face of extreme weather events and other natural threats. The challenge for the region is to hold on to those lessons and build on them to create a bright future for all its residents.
Lauren Alexander Augustine is the executive director of the Gulf Research Program at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. The article was originally posted to the website of the National Academies of Sciences.
