The Community Foundation of Sarasota County has awarded the University of South Florida Foundation a $7,500 grant to support a disaster preparedness app to help older Floridians and their caregivers better prepare for hurricanes and other potential disasters.
Lindsay Peterson, a research assistant professor in the School of Aging Studies, will be the recipient of the grant. She’s seen how older residents prepare for disasters after Hurricane Irma hit Florida in 2017.
According to the release, she will use the Community Foundation grant to work with older adult residents and their caregivers on disaster preparedness and development of the app in Sarasota, Manatee, DeSoto and Charlotte counties.
“Hurricane Ian, in 2022, was more devastating than Hurricane Irma for older adults in southwest Florida, and it showed there is an urgent need to increase the level of disaster preparedness for older adults, particularly those with dementia and other chronic conditions,” Peterson wrote in her application for the Community Foundation grant.
She said the app will provide information about the risk of storm surge or flooding that caregivers can use to tailor an evacuation or shelter-in-place plan for themselves and/or the person in their care. Storm surges and flooding often claim the most lives during hurricanes or tropical storms.
“I learned from my earlier research that family caregivers of older adults know disaster preparedness is essential, but many do not prepare because their caregiving responsibilities use so much of their time and energy. However, many are open to using a computer-based tool,” Peterson added.
The grant award is part of a larger effort to obtain needed funding for further development of the app, which will be available on computers and smartphones. Other grants awarded earlier by the College of Behavioral and Community Sciences and the Southern Gerontological Society were used to develop the pilot version of the app.
