Network members Jean Rhodes and Mary Waters continue their work—an offshoot of the Opening Doors project—examining how low-income women from New Orleans are coping with the effects of Hurricane Katrina and how it is affecting their transition to adulthood.  They are working on the project with Elizabeth Fussell (Washington State University) and Christina Paxson (Princeton University), who was awarded five years of funding from the National Institutes of Health to collect a second, post-Katrina wave of data. 

The research takes a multidisciplinary approach that extends across psychological, sociological, and economic perspectives of emerging adulthood. The study capitalizes on the extensive one-of-a-kind pre-hurricane data that were collected for 492 Opening Doors participants from New Orleans, combined with new quantitative and qualitative data that we collected this past year. This information provides a baseline against which to assess its effects and the recovery amid ongoing community challenges and migrations. Network members are examining how pre-hurricane resources, capacities, and systems affect the ability to react and successfully adjust to the major life challenges.

Researchers administered an extensive survey to better understand the individuals’ experiences during the hurricane and their outcomes afterwards.  Remarkably, they achieved an 82% response rate to this survey.  Data cleaning and preliminary analysis continues.  The study also conducted in-depth interviews with a subset of 50 individuals to understand how Katrina has affected their lives, their life goals, their plans for education and occupation, and the structure of their communities. Disasters of the magnitude of Katrina can significantly alter the path to adulthood, and understanding how these already vulnerable populations (low-income single mothers) manage complements the ongoing research of the Network and offers important, and rare, insights into the resilience, social supports, and institutional responses to a dramatic fork in the road during young adulthood.

In particular, we are studying how pre-hurricane resources, capacities, and systems—defined to include mental and physical health, social networks, and economic resources—affect the ability to react to and successfully adjust after the trauma and the major life changes brought about by the storm. We are also studying the factors that influence a broad set of outcomes measured over a three-year period following the hurricane, including psychological distress, the re-establishment of social networks, and the resumption of employment and educational activities.

We collected baseline demographic and health information for all of the 1,014 participants in the study. By the time Hurricane Katrina struck, 492 participants had been enrolled in the program long enough to complete a 12-month follow-up phone survey, which included measures of perceived social support and psychological distress. After Hurricane Katrina, we located and surveyed 402 of these 492 participants (81.7%). Interviews occurred between May 2006 and March 2007. The post-disaster phone survey included the same questions as the 12-month follow-up survey, as well as a module that collected detailed information about Hurricane experiences and a PTSD module. With the recently awarded grant, we are currently collecting three-year, follow-up, qualitative and quantitative data.

Network members Jean Rhodes and Mary Waters, along with fellow project researchers, and graduate students, are beginning to publish the early findings, which demonstrate both the effects of the hurricane and the underlying processes that account for variations in adaptive functioning. Below is a list of papers in press and submitted to peer-reviewed journals: 

Chan, C. S., Rhodes, J. E., & Perez, J. E. A prospective study of religiousness and psychological distress among female survivors of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Manuscript submitted for publication.

Lowe, S. R., Chan, C. S., & Rhodes, J. E. Pre-disaster social support protects against psychological distress: A longitudinal analysis of Hurricane Katrina survivors.  Manuscript submitted for publication.

Lowe, S. R., & Rhodes, J. E.  Community college re-enrollment after Hurricane Katrina.  Manuscript submitted for publication.

Lowe, S. R., & Rhodes, J. E. Natural mentors in the lives of Hurricane Katrina survivors.  Manuscript submitted for publication.

Lowe, S. R., Rhodes, J. E., Zwiebach, L., & Chan, C. S. (in press). The impact of pet loss on the perceived social support and psychological distress of hurricane survivors. Journal of Traumatic Stress.