Dr. Charles Hamad, Principal Investigator and Susan Wolf-Fordham receive grant funding 

Dr. Charles Hamad, Principal Investigator and Susan Wolf-Fordham, Project Director, CDDER, have received grant funding from the Deborah Munroe Noonan Memorial Research Fund to conduct "Emergency Preparedness Training for Parents of Children with Disabilities." The total grant award is $75,000, and the grant period is 9/1/09-8/31/10.

The goal of the grant is to develop a comprehensive curriculum to train parents of children with disabilities (ages 0-21) to anticipate natural and man-made emergencies and to engage in proactive pre-disaster planning, enabling them to successfully plan for their children and family's needs during the likely disruptions caused by disasters or emergencies. The curriculum, developed in collaboration with parents and emergency response professionals, will address needs raised by both groups and highlighted in the literature, and will be implemented as an in-person parent training workshop with an emergency planning workbook for parents to complete to develop a family emergency plan. Evaluation of the acceptability and efficacy of the parent training project will inform future development of an internet-based (online) emergency training program with the potential to reach families on a national basis.