Program Newsletter | 1st Quarter, 2023

HHI Resilient Communities Expands to Nepal

Perspectives from MHPSS Providers on Mental Health amid COVID-19

We partnered with the Philippine Psychiatric Association and the Psychological Association of the Philippines and conducted a study on “COVID-19-related Mental Health Challenges and Opportunities Perceived by Mental Health Providers in the Philippines.” The research assesses the psychosocial impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic as reported by licensed mental health providers in the Philippines. The findings will be published and shared with you soon.

This year, we will be launching the “Pinoy Resilience Scorecard,” an online scorecard that aims to develop a general description of the disaster preparedness and resilience of Filipinos at the individual level. The scorecard will also present information on how each person’s score compares with the rest of the respondents, and provide resources that the respondents can access to help them improve their preparedness and resilience to disasters.

Furthermore, the study's findings are intended to assist researchers, NGOs, and government agencies in better understanding the resilience of individual Filipinos and determining which aspects of resilience require more assistance in the form of knowledge, financial investments, social empowerment, training, and capacity building.

More information on the scorecard will be shared with you soon. Do you think this scorecard can help your work or your organization’s programming? Feel free to send us a note.

Dr. Vincenzo Bollettino promoted

at Harvard School of Public Health!

Congratulations to Dr. Vincenzo Bollettino on being named Senior Research Scientist in the Department of Global Health and Population at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Dr. Bollettino is the Program Director of the HHI Resilient Communities.

In his new role as Senior Research Scientist, Dr. Bollettino will serve as the principal investigator for research on disaster resilience and preparedness in the Philippines and Nepal. He also leads research related to the work of the National NGO Program on Humanitarian Leadership. 

Disaster resilience, humanitarian action, civil-military participation in emergencies, and humanitarian leadership are among the professional specialties and research interests of Dr. Bollettino. He has worked in administration, teaching, and research at Harvard University for the last twenty years of his career. He has taught courses at the Harvard Extension School on research design, peacebuilding, and international politics.

Dr. Bollettino serves as an Advisory Committee Member of the MSF Speaking Out Case Studies. He was previously a board member of ELRHA (Enhancing Learning and Research for Humanitarian Assistance), and former president of the ACF International Scientific Council (Action Against Hunger). He graduated from the University of Colorado with a Doctorate in International Studies and International Security.

We conducted research on civil-military coordination, which revealed significant challenges in protecting the integrity of independence of both military and humanitarian actors in areas impacted by both conflict and disaster. The research identified the need for principled humanitarian civil-military coordination to avert threats to both humanitarian aid workers and disaster-affected populations. These findings are relevant not only in the Philippine context but also throughout Southeast Asia where the use of the military in disaster response is common. An article sharing these findings, “Climate Change and Civil-Military Coordination in the Philippines: How climate change disasters will impact aid delivery in areas affected by conflict,” was published in the Climate, Disaster and Development Journal.

To further our intensive participatory action research in coastal communities and gain a better understanding of how local leadership can support coastal community adaptation to climate change, we teamed up with Dr. Mark Abenir, a local faculty member from Ateneo de Manila University. In a joint publication “Community-based leadership in disaster resilience: The case of small island community in Hagonoy, Bulacan, Philippines," it was found that communities with strong leadership who were able to influence local policies and link their communities to national resources would be best positioned to adapt to and better prepare for the effects of climate change. The report also revealed factors hindering community resilience in small island communities such as limited resources and few policies supporting the implementation of community-based disaster risk reduction and management (CBDRRM).