Hurricane Ike Registry, HikeR, grows to 500

The USA Center for Rural Public Health Preparedness at the School of Rural Public Health has created a registry for those who have been affected by Hurricane Ike to share experiences and participate in activities and studies over the next five years.

The Hurricane Ike Registry, also called HikeR, stores information used by the USA Center for Rural Public Health Preparedness to keep in contact with individuals who have opted to be participants in studies that will examine evacuation, sheltering and recovery from Hurricane Ike.

"We hope that through the numerous activities and studies we intend to conduct over the next five years that we are able to improve the response and recovery after hurricanes and other natural disasters," said USA Center for Rural Public Health Preparedness evaluation manager Jennifer Griffith.

The USA Center has partnered up with different communities and stakeholders to help prepare for natural disasters.

The registry was mainly created as a way to stay in touch with people years after the disaster has occurred, said Griffith.

The studies will be conducted through surveys, interviews and small group discussion.

The registry has grown substantially since its launch in January, said Griffith.

"We have over 500 people in the registry," Griffith said. "We are still recruiting and work primarily through identifying community groups and partners to help us spread the word".

The registry was created by the Knowledge Engineering Center at the School of Rural Public Health to replace the previous, manually done, registration process.

"The CDC designated us as one of their twenty seven Centers for Public Health preparedness," said Barbara Quiram, director of the Office of Special Programs and director of the USA Center for Rural Public Health Preparedness at the School of Rural Public Health. "Of those 27 centers ours is the only one with a rural focus."

The registry was an extension of the goals that the USA Center for Rural Public Health Preparedness has been implementing since its foundation in 2002, after the events of Sept. 11, said Quiram.

"They chose to go online to be able to track participants for specific studies, participants that were available, and it made it easier to organize the data for managing that flow of information," said Vince Riggins, Lead Software Applications Developer for the Knowledge Engineering Center.

In addition, HikeR allows individuals affected by the hurricane to register for themselves, so information entered is more likely to be accurate, said Riggins.

-Vicky Flores, The Battalion