Socioeconomic and Demographic Factors

The United States has always been known as a melting pot.  Our country continues to become more diverse each and every year.  Some portions of our communities do not respond to traditional fire safety education efforts, and this is where community risk reduction on a more local level becomes important.  

Read the following resources before authoring your forum post:

Socioeconomic Factors and the Incidence of Fire

Fire and the Poor: Identifying and Assessing Community Risk and Intervention Strategies

NFPA: Demographic and Victim Patterns

NFPA: Characteristics of Home Fire Victims

Springfield, MO Fire Dept

Reaching the Hard to Reach

Utilizing demographic information from sources such as the US Census, we can find out a great deal about the make-up of the communities we serve.  From our research this week, we can see that certain segments of the population are more at risk from the effects of fire.  Using this information to our advantage, we can design and implement community risk reduction program on a local level in order to most efficiently utilize our resources and make the biggest impact on the citizens we serve. 

Because of different various socioeconomic and demographic indicators, reaching some segments of the population and establishing meaningful relationships can be very challenging.  However, many times these groups are the very people who we need to reach and change attitudes and behaviors regarding fire safety, making them excellent candidates for community risk reduction efforts.

Using your weekly readings, the internet and other scholarly journals, research and report on a fire department that was able to reach out and improve the fire safety education efforts with this population of the community.  

• Make sure to report demographic information on the service area using the US Census website.  
• Include the difficulty the fire department was having reaching out to the particular segment of the population as well as the strategies they employed to improve relationships and make a positive impact.  
• Also include how the fire department’s strategies could be replicated by other fire departments.  

For example: The Seattle Fire Department’s efforts are highlighted in a presentation that gives a terrific overview of their community risk reduction programs and the partnership efforts involved. This is just one of the terrific efforts for you to focus on this week.  Other examples are available at the Community Risk Reduction ScoopIt page.