Many topics of interest and importance are covered during the course; Week 8, especially, provides an opportunity to explore several, often overlooked topics that are critical to our understanding in the discussion of the psychology of disaster. For your course project, you are tasked with selecting one of the following areas, presented during week seven of the course, and examining a disaster event, using the selected area as the foundation of your work. The areas from which you may select include:

· Secondary Traumatic Stress (Effects of disasters on first responders/BH providers)

· Environmental Vulnerabilities and Considerations

· Critical Infrastructure Failures

· Disaster in School Environments 

· In a 8 to 12 slide PowerPoint presentation, identify a recent disaster event (within the most recent 10 years), providing a description of the major events of the disaster leading up to, during, and after the event, to the extent possible. 

o Incorporating the selected area above, discuss, with detail and support, how the area is illustrated in the disaster event.

· Explore how the selected element influenced disaster response efforts. 

o Provide details of the ways in which these influences were observed. 

o Discuss any barriers presented by the selected element in providing effectual behavioral health interventions. 

· Prepare a plan describing how the challenges experienced might be more effectively navigated using the principles of disaster behavioral health learned throughout the course. 

o Share the steps and resources you would deploy to overcome or avoid the challenges faced in the selected element. 

In developing your work, be sure to rely upon academic, scholarly sources to support the definitions and recommendations provided. Ensure the plan presented is based upon evidenced based practices established in the field as effective in addressing psychological needs in disaster settings. 

Work should be submitted in a PowerPoint file or other compatible file, and be 8 to 12 slides in length, excluding the required title slide and separate reference slide. Detailed speaker notes should accompany slides containing mostly bullet point data to include the details expected in the instructions above. 

Scholarly sources should be cited both in-text and on the reference page of the submission. A minimum of three academic, scholarly sources are required to be cited in the work.