Commission Focus Topics

2024 Emergency Preparedness Focus

Planning for a safety crisis is crucial to maintaining quality of life and especially important for older adults, who are among those most impacted by major health events or hazards. In recent years, the COVID-19 global pandemic touched everyone’s lives and has provided an intimate perspective on how to navigate future events. Research and technology have also evolved, providing deeper insights into hazards and offering potential virtual solutions to some issues that hazards may present.
As a follow-up to the Commission’s 2023 update of the Aging Readiness Plan (ARP or plan), the Clark County Commission on Aging has chosen to focus 2024 on the sixth and newest chapter of the ARP: Emergency Preparedness.
The Emergency Preparedness chapter provides strategies that outline how older adults could be affected by natural and human-caused hazards and other ways the county can improve the health and safety of this demographic. It explains ways older adults could be impacted by communicable diseases, wildfires, flooding, extreme heat events, and geologic and seismic hazards, and ways to prepare older adults for these hazards.
Eighteen (18) of the 67 strategies outlined in the ARP were identified as priority strategies. Priority strategies are planned for early implementation because their importance was highlighted by the community and/or they lay the groundwork for supporting strategies. The priority strategies that were chosen by Commission members to focus on for 20243, are:
EP-2.2, Encourage neighborhood associations and homeowner’s associations to work with CRESA to educate community members about emergency preparedness and implementing local programs;
EP-2.3, Connect caregivers and interested community member4s to educational resources about hazard preparedness; and,
EP-2.4, Promote the development of a voluntary Vulnerable Population Registration for emergency service providers.
This year, the commission has dedicated eight monthly meetings to increase awareness about what emergency preparedness is and what it can look like on a personal, neighborhood, community and regional level. The COA invited experts from CRESA, Clark County’s regional emergency services agency, to speak about their “Prepare in a Year” plan for disaster. The topics of discussion include: