‘Be Earthquake Aware and Prepared, Not Scared’, a key takeaway as 2020 National Earthquake Conference Concludes

The quadrennial 2020 National Earthquake Conference (#NEC2020), which took place this week in San Diego, concluded today. The conference brought together more than 600 global attendees from across the academic, public, and private sector to examine and share the latest advances in earthquake science, policy initiatives, practice, and engineering.

Conference goals were to improve life safety when earthquakes occur, to help communities learn how to recover faster, and to help prevent or minimize physical earthquake damage through stronger building practices, including research-informed, model building codes and standards.

“This week, hundreds of committed experts came together to learn, collaborate, inspire, and identify ways to meet the challenge of deadly and destructive earthquake risk, said Leslie Chapman-Henderson, President and CEO of the nonprofit Federal Alliance for Safe Homes, Inc. (FLASH) and conference co-organizer. “We shared the latest in physical and social science, emergency management technology and best practices, engineering-informed building code policy, and much more. Thanks to this exchange, new seismic risk solutions are already emerging to help protect people and communities.”…

PTSD: Lessons Learned From the Armenia Earthquake

War, natural disasters, interpersonal violence, and other causes of trauma continue to plague our world. As a result, epidemiological studies have found worldwide lifetime prevalence rates for posttraumatic stress disorder as high as 20.4% for women and 8.2% for men.1 To help prevent and treat the negative consequences of trauma, psychiatry continues to not only study the consequences of trauma, but also the genetic and psychosocial influences on developing PTSD…