Disaster Recovery and Community‐Dwelling Older Adults: An Intervention Study of Self‐Efficacy

ABSTRACT The disaster recovery phase refers to the actions taken to bring a disaster‐stricken community back to its pre‐disaster state. This phase is often forgotten as communities deal with the long‐haul process. Community‐dwelling older adults, individuals at least 60 years of age who live independently, frequently find themselves left behind in the recovery phase. One actionable route to improving the inclusion of community‐dwelling older adults in disaster recovery is to empower their self‐efficacy. This study examined how a novel disaster recovery seminar impacted self‐efficacy for community‐dwelling older adults. A total of 47 recovery seminars were conducted by AmeriCorps team members between November 2023 and October 2024 in the Missouri cities of Kansas City and Independence. The general self‐efficacy scale was distributed to participants in the context of disaster recovery both before and after the recovery seminars. The Wilcoxon signed‐rank test was used to examine statistically significant differences between the pre‐ and post‐intervention composite scores. Results indicate statistically significant differences, with post‐intervention composite scores showing an overall increase in self‐efficacy for disaster recovery. While these results imply positive self‐efficacy growth for community‐dwelling older adults via the seminar‐based strategy, it is recommended that this intervention study be replicated.