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The focus of this contribution is on the psychosocial well‐being, health, and functioning of communities in the context of major crises. A multilayered psychosocial resilience framework is described, conceptualizing and connecting capacities at individual, community, and society levels. Effective crisis management is strengthening and utilizing these capacities. The community as a resilient, functioning social system depends, almost by definition, on collaboration among government, business, and civil society. Yet while resilience and crisis management form a logical combination, resilience for its part is depoliticized and naturalizing, whereas crisis management can be controversial and politically intense, which in practice means crisis management might negatively affect the development of more resilient communities.

Despite available knowledge on appropriate psychosocial support for people confronted with death, loss, and severe stress in the context of major crises and disasters, it is crucial to understand what people affected expect from government officials and public leaders in the aftermath of an extreme event. Eight interviews with affected adult residents were conducted to explore their expectations and experiences in relation to government. This was done against the background of Park's () model on meaning making. Findings revealed that interviewees expected the government to help them in a fair, compassionate, equal, and reliable manner. They also expected support in fulfilling event‐related practical needs, and assumed that the government would use its capacity to align network partners and break down bureaucratic barriers. The affected individuals' global beliefs and situational meaning may differ from the perceptions of the public leader who provides support.

Background: During times of crisis, mayors may play an important role as public leaders and providers of social support to affected residents. However, empirical studies have not yet been conducted among the involved mayors about the support they provide and the factors associated with it. Objective: The aim is to examine the support the mayors provided to the affected residents during crises and to test the possible determinants of this support. Method: A web-based survey developed for this study, including a modified version of the Social Support Survey, was filled by 266 Dutch mayors (response = 66.5%), of whom 231 were involved in at least one crisis in their community in the past five years. We examined the association between the perceived support provided by the mayors and their years of experience, demographics, municipality size, and assessment of the collective impact of the crisis and their own political responsibility. Moreover, we tested the probability of mayoral home visits based on the same factors as well as loss of life. Results: All of the involved Dutch mayors reported providing support, which varied from lending a listening ear to discussing public ceremonies and remembrances with the affected and their families. The mayors' age, sex, municipality size, and years of experience were not significantly related to the perceived social support provision or willingness to reach out to affected citizens. Apart from fatalities linked to the crisis, none of the factors tested had a significant effect on the probability of mayors making home visits. Conclusion: Mayors are likely to report positively on how they provided social support to residents during crises regardless of the factors considered. Mayors are most likely to conduct home visits in situations where one or more citizens died. Further validation and replication of the social support measurement instrument is needed.

Epidemiological research has documented the serious health issues that can affect the victims of disasters and major crises. Yet, the psychosocial dimension of crisis has received little attention in crisis management literature. This paper integrates psychosocial principles with a model of strategic crisis management. The resulting model of psychosocial crisis management (PCM) describes how the tasks of strategic crisis managers can be guided by psychosocial support principles. This PCM‐model helps public leaders, at society and local community level, to better understand typical psychosocial dynamics and obstacles as the crisis life cycle evolves. Although crisis management insights and psychosocial support principles stem from different disciplines and research traditions, integrating them helps to reduce foreseeable problems in the response and recovery phases.

Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 crashed in the Ukraine on 17 July 2014 with 193 Dutch passengers on board. The present study assessed which MH17‐related activities (or absence of certain activities) of 54 mayors from the Netherlands were mentioned in (social) media and if and how they were evaluated. Analyses of newspaper articles and social media showed that public 'meaning making' and 'remembering' by mayors can be considered as a table stake or conditio sine qua non. Mayors are expected to speak at memorials and attend community activities. Strong appreciation was however retrieved from victims' families whenever mayors visited them with a listening ear in the privacy of their homes, demonstrating the role mayors can fulfil as mourners‐in‐chief in local communities.

The aim of this article is to provide a systematic review of peer‐reviewed literature on leadership tasks and effectiveness of mayors and governors during drastic collective events. A total of 34 peer‐reviewed articles met our criteria. They were analysed using the theoretical framework by Boin on leadership tasks, i.e., sense making, decision making, meaning making, terminating, and learning. Studies ranged from minor incidents like local riots, to the events of 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina. The material turned out to be dominated by Western and American studies. Because of limitations in the empirical and knowledge base of the studies, it is difficult to draw general conclusions on what is supposed to be effective leadership by mayors and/or governors in these circumstances.

The aim of this systematic review was (a) to synthesize the evidence on the effectiveness of detection, mitigation, and actions to reduce risks in hospitals and (b) to identify and describe components of interventions responsible for effectiveness. Thirteen literature databases were explored using a structured search and data extraction strategy. All included studies dealing with incident reporting described positive effects. Evidence regarding the effectiveness and efficiency of safety analysis is scarce. No studies on mitigation were included. The collected evidence on risk reduction concerns a variety of interventions to reduce medication errors, fall incidents, diagnostic errors, and adverse events in general. Most studies reported positive effects; however, interventions were often multifaceted, and it was difficult to disentangle their impact. This made it difficult to draw generic lessons from this body of research. More rigorous evaluations are needed, in particular, of continuous learning and safety analysis techniques.

Background: Despite numerous calls for a more evidence-based provision of post-disaster psychosocial support, systematic analyses of post-disaster service delivery are scarce. Objective: The aim of this review was evaluate the organization of post-disaster psychosocial support in different disaster settings and to identify determinants. Methods: We conducted a meta-synthesis of scientific literature and evaluations of post-disaster psychosocial support after 12 Dutch disasters and major crises between 1992 and 2014. We applied systematic search and snowballing methods and included 80 evaluations, as well as grey and scientific documents. Results: Many documents focus on the prevalence of mental health problems. Only a few documents primarily assess the organization of post-disaster psychosocial support and its determinants. The material illustrates how, over the course of two decades, the organizational context of post-disaster psychosocial support in the Netherlands has been influenced by changes in legislation, policy frameworks, evidence-based guidelines, and the instalment of formal expertise structures to support national and local governments and public services. Recurring organizational issues in response to events are linked to interrelated evaluation themes such as planning, training, registration, provision of information and social acknowledgement. For each evaluation theme, we identify factors helping or hindering the psychosocial support organization during the preparedness, acute and recovery phases. Conclusions: The meta-synthesis illustrates that psychosocial service delivery has grown from a monodisciplinary to a multidisciplinary field over time. Suboptimal interprofessional collaboration poses a recurring threat to service quality. Despite the development of the knowledge base, post-disaster psychosocial support in the Netherlands lacks a systematic and critical appraisal of its functioning. Further professionalization is coupled with the strengthening of evaluation and learning routines.

The global response to infectious diseases has seen a renewed interest in the use of community engagement to support research and relief efforts. From a perspective rooted in the social sciences, the concept of vulnerability offers an especially useful analytical frame for pursuing community engagement in a variety of contexts. However, few have closely examined the concept of vulnerability in community engagement efforts, leading to a need to better understand the various theories that underline the connections between the two. This literature review searched four databases (covering a total of 537 papers), resulting in 15 studies that analyze community engagement using a framing of vulnerability, broadly defined, in the context of an infectious disease, prioritizing historical and structural context and the many ways of constituting communities. The review identified historical and structural factors such as trust in the health system, history of political marginalization, various forms of racism and discrimination, and other aspects of vulnerability that are part and parcel of the main challenges faced by communities. The review found that studies using vulnerability within community engagement share some important characteristics (e.g., focus on local history and structural factors) and identified a few theoretical avenues from the social sciences which integrate a vulnerability-informed approach in community engagement. Finally, the review proposes an approach that brings together the concepts of vulnerability and community engagement, prioritizing participation, empowerment, and intersectoral collaboration.